Who can forget Tyler Danish’s masterful 2013 season, when the senior led the Durant Cougars to the FHSAA State Championship tournament?
Maybe Durant fans haven’t forgotten those good days, and much of the 2015 squad certainly hasn’t either. But this year’s team has done what Danish’s squad didn’t: They got to the State Championship without any star power in the starting lineup.
Durant’s clubhouse has traditionally been a loose, fun-loving group, but even its veterans have noticed something different about this team — different from last season, when the Cougars boasted the area’s strongest senior core.
“This year’s team, we kind of work together more,” senior pitcher Bryce Gainer says. “When Danish was on the mound, our sophomore year, we had a pretty solid defense. When Chaz (Fowler) and some of our other pitchers got on the mound, our defense kind of wasn’t the same. When Danish was up there, we didn’t worry about it. With everyone else, we kind of stressed it.”
That’s to be expected of any team with a certified stud ace in its employ, something that was confirmed when the Chicago White Sox made Danish a second-round draft pick in 2013. He left some big shoes to fill, and while no pitcher has exactly come close to pitching on that level, the staff has been good enough to give the defense the confidence it’s needed.
“This year, whether I’m on the mound, Jonah (Scolaro)’s on the mound, Chelsea (Baker)’s on the mound or anybody else, we just play the same,” Gainer says. “We all expect everybody to do their job and pick everybody up, and that’s what’s gotten us this far.”
In some ways, this team has been even better than the 2013 squad. That squad went 7-3 in the district, with a 25-6 overall record, but this year’s team put up a perfect 10-0 district mark, and as of press time, a 23-6 overall record. The 2015 batting average is a bit higher, at .296, and the only major difference at the plate is that the 2013 squad was a little more adept at getting on base: they posted a .397 on-base percentage, compared to this year’s .367 OBP.
There is another big difference that shows up on the field these days, one that no one needs a stat sheet to see: The 2015 team has developed a tendency to make fans freak out.
In 2013, the Cougars were dominant from April to May. Other than a 1-0 loss at Newsome April 2, that team won every game until the May 18 state championship final. Durant posted 10 wins by three or more runs, including six shutouts. The team also never allowed more than three runs to any opponent in that span, at least until they drew Lake Brantley in the finals and lost, 8-3.
In 2015, the Cougars opened April with a 9-0 thrashing of Plant City on the second of the month. Since then, they’ve posted only one loss, but have only won one game by more than two runs, and have taken three contests to extra innings. None of those wins have seen the offense score more than five runs. In many of these games, especially throughout the district and regional tournaments, Cougar fans have been everywhere on the emotional spectrum but “angry.”
Maybe it’s made those wins sweeter. After Durant defeated Osceola in the regional championship, for example, the atmosphere at the school was so hyped that even head coach Butch Valdes, who has long preferred to let the team’s actions speak for themselves, rather than do much talking, opened up before and after his first-ever Gatorade bath as coach.
“This is a close family,” Valdes said. “You don’t see any big names that are popping up. There’s just not that huge Tyler Danish stigma … It’s a family. They’re part of the family, and they know it, but these kids just stick together. I’ve never had a team this close.”
This team is once again set to lose a big group of seniors to graduation, but the atmosphere around the clubhouse hints that the younger guys have all picked up on what makes the chemistry so great and how to apply it for the future. While many sports teams will talk about brotherhood, family ties and the like, not all of them say what they say with conviction. This team, however, has shown its true colors from top to bottom, and any possible result from this week’s tournament seems unlikely to have affected that.
“What we do is we stay together,” Valdes said. “We take care of each other, and we fight together as a family.”
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
STATE TOURNEY
Unfortunately, Durant found a deficit it couldn’t overcome in Wednesday’s state tournament action.
Facing Oviedo in the state semifinal, the Cougars took a 12-0 loss after allowing nine runs on eight hits in the first inning. Reliever Josh Mejia kept the Lions in check from the second through sixth innings, but Oviedo sealed the deal with three more scores in the seventh frame.