Smackover aiming for success during summer season
EL DORADO - In the past, Smackover coach B.J. Greene has used the summer to evaluate and see where younger players could help the varsity squad the following spring.
And while that still holds true, Greene said that with having a young varsity team next year, wins and losses during the American Legion season have added importance this summer.
"The ultimate goal is to get the games, innings and practices in, but I'm not going to lie, this group of kids doesn't need a lot of losses," Greene said.
"They need to win, so we're putting more emphasis on winning. I'm usually that coach that is a lot more relaxed in summer baseball, and I've always been that way, but I'm not doing that this year with this group, because like we tell them, the margin of error for us is very small.
"If you throw errors on top of that, or walks or hit batters or a lot of strikeouts, the margin gets smaller and smaller
until you have no window to win, so we're approaching it just like a high school season this year.
"We're practicing pretty much every day except for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, unless we're playing on any day."
Smackover began its second season of fielding a junior American Legion team last weekend with a 1-2 showing at the Edward Jones Invitational.
Tucker Evans delivered a game-winning single in Smackover's win over Camden, and Cade Schibler, who emerged as the Bucks' No. 2 starter behind graduated ace Beau Burson, turned in a solid outing.
"Honestly, I think we had 18 errors in three games, so we're pretty lucky to even win one game," Greene said.
"I was proud of our kids for how they competed throughout the weekend.
"It felt like we were constantly playing from behind."
One facet to the Bucks' summer season is that their pitchers are getting introduced to new assistant coach Jeff Burson's pitching program.
"The pitchers have got workouts every day except for Friday," Greene said.
"Usually you have your pitching workouts after practice, but we've got our pitchers on a pitching program with coach Burson, which was a tremendous hire for our school.
"He's making gains with those guys and making them compete more."
Although the loss of Beau Burson is going to be difficult to overcome, the Bucks also lost starters Weston Smith, Clay Stringer, Brennan McKnight and Nick Jennings to graduation.
The departure of Stringer, the Bucks' shortstop, leaves a big void in the middle of the infield, and Greene admitted that is one area that will be difficult to shore up.
"We're working pretty much every guy we've got in every position," Greene said.
"We're returning four starters and a DH, but we've already looked at moving two of those starters to other positions and let younger kids jump in and play those positions.
"In my personal opinion, one of the biggest positions that we lost was at shortstop.
"Right now, we're kind of shortstop poor. We have a couple of choices for a couple of seniors, but I'm one of those coaches that unless they're just standout, I'd rather see a younger guy play there and we'll just take our lumps.
"As a coaching staff, we're going to have to figure that out."
After a junior year where he received just 11 at-bats, Jennings parlayed his work last summer into a starting role for the Bucks this past season, earning All-State Tournament honors with 11 stolen bases and 14 attempts, and his name is often mentioned by the coaching staff as a player who took advantage of summer baseball to improve.
Now the Bucks may have another summer success story in Forrest Harrison, who will be a junior.
"He spends all of the extra time in the cage," Greene said.
"He's there all the time. He goes through our pitching program to get his arm stronger even though he's not a pitcher.
He's going to be a big piece of our puzzle in the outfield. I compared him to Nick Jennings last week in the tournament.
"I told our kids that if you want to see what doing extra does for you as a player, you need to look at Forrest Harrison and Nick Jennings.
"It's tremendous. That's what we preach to these guys. The summer can be really, really good depending on how you do it.
"I don't know how our wins and losses are going to turn out next season, but I don't know that I've ever had a group of kids that want to get better and work as hard as this group is working for us right now."
With several spots to fill due to graduation, the summer will be critical for the coaching staff to see exactly who could fit in where.
"We know we've got a young team coming up," Greene said.
"We've got a bunch of guys that have never been asked to be a starter, so we know we've got to do a lot over the summer to get those guys ready for March."