GREENE COUNTY
The Lake Oconee Academy baseball program is in its seventh season and traveled to the Academy for Classical Education (ACE) for its season opener this past Monday.
The Titans ended up losing the game 5-3, but first-year head coach Mark Miller believed that it was good for the players to have a tough test early in the season.
“We talk about how baseball is a game of adversity, whether it be on the mound or in the batter’s box, and how you’re going to have to know how to deal with it,” Miller said. “We battled back to win a scrimmage game against Jasper County last week, and just didn’t quite push through to win on Monday. We’ve played two tough opponents and have to continue to persevere.”
The Titans got behind the Gryphons early and trailed 2-0 after the first inning, but Miller’s squad responded with two of its own in the top half of the second to tie it up.
At the plate, seniors Sumner Coleman and Harrison Tolleson both led the Titans with two hits. Tolleson, along with juniors Ian Watson and Jack Walker, each ended the contest with one RBI.
From there, it was a pitching duel that went in favor of ACE. The Titans gave up three runs over the next three innings and trailed 5-2 before scoring its third run in the top of the fifth.
Trace Wood started the game for Lake Oconee Academy and pitched the first three innings. Tolleson would pitch the next two and freshman Dylan Hiter came in for relief in the last inning.
The group combined for eight strikeouts but ended up allowing six total walks.
Moving forward, Miller hopes that the work his players did over the offseason will help keep them in shape to battle in these close games later on in the season.
“We’ve been trying to develop more pitching depth which I think we’re doing. One of the main things we focused on during the offseason was arm care,” Miller said. “We don’t want these guys getting hurt because they weren’t prepared out the gate and so far, so good.
We just want to build the culture here and put more of an emphasis on the sport itself.”
The culture has gradually changed around the baseball program at Lake Oconee Academy, and it’s currently full of young guys that are willing to learn.
Out of the 17 players on the team, only four of them will graduate at the end of the season. On top of that, the Titans middle school program won the area championship last season, so Miller is excited about the direction of the program at the high school level.
“Our current freshmen, sophomores and juniors are learning about what the culture is like and everything that entails as far as hard work and more hard work,” Miller said. “I don’t know if they’ve been used to that in the past, but they’ve accepted it with open arms and have bought in. I think this place will be a baseball gold mine waiting to happen.”
Looking ahead, the Titans will host Greene County later today for its first region game of the season and has a full three-game slate next week.