Subscribe
CommunityGoing old-school by forgetting the past
Friday, March 28, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photo by VAL NYCE
Mark Oxendine (Stone) and CSM baseball hope to turn things around in 2008.
|
E-Mail This Article
While the turn-back-the-clock garb sparked some laughs – particularly from the players about how far uniforms have come since their head coach, CSM product Joe Blandford, competed in the old-school outfit they were wearing – there was some underlying symbolic significance to the novelty threads.
CSM is looking to rekindle its winning tradition, which now seems many moons ago, and digging out the old-school uniforms for the photo opportunity provided imagery to that objective.
In the process, the program wants to bury the frustration of the recent past, which includes a 4-19 record a year ago in club status to run its current stretch of consecutive losing seasons to five.
Before that, CSM had prospered with seven straight winning campaigns from 1995-2002, highlighted by a Maryland Junior College Conference championship in 1998. The program also thrived with four straight winning seasons from 1986-89.
‘‘It’s a different vibe, in general, because it’s a brand new team. It’s a whole new crop of kids,” freshman catcher Matt Hoepfl (McDonough) said. ‘‘Every two years in JUCO, the recruiting process starts over and everything’s fresh.”
About the symbolic significance of the retro uniforms toward CSM’s turnaround endeavor, Hoepfl added: ‘‘A lot of kids on our team are throwbacks. We have that sandlot spirit. We just love to come out and play baseball all day. We play baseball the same way kids play pickup basketball – get your friends, get your glove, go play ball. We really enjoy coming out to practice everyday.
‘‘Every single player on this team can play at the next level [of four-year college ball] – D-III and up.”
Already, CSM has surpassed last year’s win total, and the season is not even halfway over.
The team was 7-8 overall, 2-4 in the Maryland JUCO, going into Thursday’s contest at league opponent Rockville.
‘‘They’re excited about playing; they’re enthusiastic and want to win,” Blandford said of his team. ‘‘I got some good kids from SMAC this year. This is really a big rebuilding year, a huge rebuilding year from last year. These are the kids who are taking the program up another notch. We should be around .500. I can certainly make that prediction if we play well. And next year, we’ll really have a good year.”
If CSM is to get things steered in the right direction, this is the pivotal season when the groundwork must be laid. A few years from now, the program might be looking back to this spring as the impetus behind a turnaround.
‘‘I knew they had a solid recruiting year,” freshman outfielder Dennis Morgan (McDonough) said. ‘‘I knew some of the players that were coming, so I knew we were going to have a chance. I figured we could come in here and jell and make a good season out of it. It’s definitely a completely different atmosphere [than last year], because everybody’s serious this year. We want to go out there and win games, and we support each other all the way.”
CSM will be sporting their current jerseys in games, as the retro ones were only for its picture day.
‘‘We’ve got a great team this year, so maybe bringing back some of these [retro] jerseys will spark us to make a run at it like back in the day,” Morgan added.
The team consists of 17 players. All but four are freshman, and 13 are SMAC products hailing from Chopticon, Lackey, Leonardtown, McDonough, Northern and Thomas Stone.
Freshman third baseman Warren Sollers (Lackey) was a first-team All-SMAC selection last year, while Morgan and freshman pitcher Pat Mahoney (Stone) earned second-team All-SMAC honors.
‘‘Defensively, this is probably the best team I’ve ever had,” said Blandford, entering his eighth year at the helm. ‘‘We’re a scrappy team. We’re not going to outhit a lot of teams, but we’ve got good speed. We’ve got guys who get on and make things happen on the base paths.”
Sophomore second baseman Chris Williford, a first-year member of CSM, is one of the few players on the team not from the SMAC. He played his high school ball in Yorktown, Va.
‘‘This year we’ve got a pretty strong ball club,” he said. ‘‘I feel the coaches did a good job at recruiting a lot of talent out of the area and other places to turn this club around. [The coaching staff] is really focused about getting the club to a competitive level. We really practice hard, and I think we have a lot of talent.”
The writing was on the wall last year before the club-level team amassed the worst record in program history. CSM had to drop to the club level because it lost an array of players due to unsatisfactory academics. The team refused to shut down the season altogether, allowing the players who were academically eligible a chance to compete.
‘‘There were some good things that came out of [last year]. We kept the program alive,” said Blandford, who sent a couple of last year’s players to four-year schools and returned three talents. ‘‘For the most part, we have a lot of good student-athletes this year. We’ve been able to stay on top of them [academically], and when they start to falter, we start intervening and making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. We’ve got a lot of good grade point averages. So I’m really happy about that.”
‘‘The difference is night and day in the academic advising,” Hoepfl said in comparing last season to this one. ‘‘The college supports us 100 percent. We have mandatory study hall three hours a week. You’ve got to hit the books first – we’re student-athletes, students first. We’re so honored to represent the area, the college and ourselves in the most positive of manners.”
Hoepfl and company fully believe in the program Blandford is running.
‘‘Joe Blandford is a winner. He was a winner when he played here,” Hoepfl said. ‘‘I know it’s been frustrating for him [in the recent past], but this is the end of all his frustrations. It’s the end of our frustrations.”
dcogle@somdnews.com
