The wait is over: Canes seek revenge vs. UF
The Miami Hurricanes blinked and the 2020 college baseball season was gone. Almost a year after the gone-too-soon season, all there is left to think about is that early season series against the Florida Gators — a No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown in a season without any conference games or champions crowned.
It was the signature lasting memory — really, the only one worth keeping — for Miami. The Hurricanes entered the second weekend of the year ranked No. 1 by D1Baseball.com and Florida was No. 2. Every single game at Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field turned into a heavyweight showdown between two supposed national contenders, and each time the Gators came out on top with Miami leaving the tying run at the plate.
“That’s the only series we’ve really talked about, been talking about this past year,” infielder Anthony Vilar said. “It’s the only series we all pretty much remember.”
Less than three weeks later, the season was over. The COVID-19 pandemic halted the season with the Hurricanes ranked No. 7. When the Florida series ended, coach Gino DiMare thanked God it was early in the season. Somewhere down the road, Miami would have a chance to prove its early season sweep was evidence of how close it was to contention rather than how far it was from the elite echelon of the sport.
The Hurricanes never got their chance. Friday will finally present one. For the first time in nearly a year, Miami will be back on the diamond when it opens up a three-game series against the top-ranked Gators in Gainesville.
Once again, the meeting between state rivals promises to be one of the marquee matchups of the entire season and, for the first time since 2004, it arrives on opening day. Florida is the unanimous No. 1 after finishing last season at No. 1 and bringing back every major contributor. Miami is ranked as high as No. 6 by Collegiate Baseball and as low as No. 21 by D1Baseball after losing its entire starting rotation, but bringing back nearly all of its lineup.
With five losses in a row to the Gators and 33 in their last 41 dating to 2009, the Hurricanes want to reassert themselves as a peer to Florida.
“It’s honestly a great opportunity for us as a team, going against a team like that that’s had a good past against us since I’ve been here,” infielder Alex Toral said. “I feel like it’s motivating for me as an individual and also the rest of the team. A lot of us have been playing them the last couple years and we haven’t come out on top, so we’re going up there hungry and looking for a good weekend series.”
THE MIAMI HURRICANES’ LOADED LINEUP
The path to an upset begins with Miami’s battle-tested lineup. Collegiate Baseball, the National College Baseball Writers Association, Baseball America and the USA Today Coaches Poll all peg the Hurricanes as preseason top-15 teams, mainly because of what they have back on offense.
While the Hurricanes lost their entire starting rotation from last year, all but one player is back from their typical lineup last year and the offense should even improve with the additions of freshman infielders CJ Kayfus and Yohandy Morales, who were both top-100 prospects in the PerfectGame.org rankings, plus transfers Ben Wanger and Christian Del Castillo.
At the heart of the lineup are two preseason All-Americans: Toral and catcher Adrian Del Castillo.
Toral is one of the nation’s premier power hitters with 30 home runs and a .539 slugging percentage in 100 career games, and Del Castillo, the younger brother of the transfer outfielder, projects as a potential top-five pick in the 2021 MLB draft after posting a .929 on-base-plusslugging percentage in his first two seasons in Coral Gables.
The Gators swept Miami last season by holding the Hurricanes’
potent offense in check — Miami scored just eight runs in 30 innings — and they do return some of the nation’s top starters, including right-handed pitcher Tommy Mace, who went undrafted last year, returned to school and could be a first-round pick in 2021.
“Our offense should be good — we’ve got a lot of our guys back — so hopefully we can put nine guys out there that’ll get good at-bats so we can find a way to produce runs,” DiMare said. “We’ve got to do a better job offensively than we did last year. I don’t even think we challenged them a whole lot offensively last year and that cannot happen if you’re going to go play a team like this.”
MIAMI’S POTENTIALLY PROMISING PITCHING PLAN
The arms that kept the Hurricanes’ within striking distance throughout the entire Florida series last year are all gone. Righty Slade Cecchoni went in the first round of the 2020 MLB draft, starting pitcher Chris McMahon went in the second and neither was even Miami’s ace. Pitcher Brian Van Belle started on Fridays and signed with the Boston Red Sox last year as an undrafted free agent.
This year, the Hurricanes had to build a new rotation from scratch.
Right-handed pitcher Daniel Federman, Miami’s closer last season, will start Friday at Florida
Ballpark, and two true freshmen will follow him. Two-way player Alejandro Rosario will start Saturday and right-handed pitcher Victor Mederos will go Sunday. Both were top-40 prospects and the biggest reason the Hurricanes landed the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class for the first time, according to Baseball America. They’ll be the first freshmen to start on opening weekend for Miami since 2011.
The coronavirus pandemic meant a shorter MLB draft in 2020 — five rounds instead of the usual 30. It helped the Gators, because stars like Mace went unselected and decided to return rather than take a smaller free agent contract, but it helped the Hurricanes, too.
Rosario and Mederos, in a normal year, would’ve been locks to go in the top half of the draft. Baseball America pegged both among the top 100 draft prospects overall, yet no one wanted to draft them and risk not signing them when they only had so many chances to pick.
The result is a freshman class that could turn the Miami into a national contender for the next three years.
“That type of talent,” recruiting coordinator Norberto Lopez said, “doesn’t make it to campus if it wasn’t for a five-round draft.”
Miami Southridge’s Alyssa Jones breaks records these days, not broomsticks.
But during quarantine, Jones went back to her roots.
“When I was a kid, I loved watching the high jump on TV,” Jones said. “So I set up a broom and propped up over my bed as the bar. I remember I broke the first one I used. It was a little scary because I didn’t want my mom to get mad at me for that. It went more smoothly now.”
Jones wasn’t a menace to sweeping tools for too long.
Before the pandemic canceled the track season, Jones posted the best marks in the nation in the high jump (6-feet, 3⁄4-inch) and long jump (20-feet, 9 1⁄4-inches) and also ran the fifth-fastest time in the nation in the 200-meter dash (23.90 seconds) per DyeStat.com.
Jones, a junior who has college offers from several Division-I schools including Stanford, Georgia and Texas A&M, was named Gatorade’s Florida Athlete of the Year in track and field.
“Her natural strength makes her one of the strongest jumpers that’s ever come through and her ability to adjust and adapt to the little things you need to be successful [in those events],” Southridge coach Erin McCray said. “Typically a lot of jumpers can’t run, but she can do both at a high level and that’s rare.”
After winning a state title in the high jump as a freshman in 2019 with a mark of 5-9 3⁄4, Jones was poised to capture more gold before everything was shut down last year.
Jones took a bit of a break between March and June after what she said had been non-stop freshman and sophomore seasons.
It didn’t detract from her focus to get better though.
Jones spent days running in open fields at a park near her house.
She then practiced her approaches to jumps in the streets where at least once she tore a hole in her sneakers on the pavement.
Without a place to actually jump over a bar prompted her improv training in her room.
Jones didn’t stop there though.
“Later on [in the offseason], she ordered her own cones, her own measuring tape and asked me, ‘Coach what do I need to do to keep going?’ ” McCray said. “That’s what separates the elite kids. They’re going to ask ‘what do I need to do to stay fit?’ She wants to be great and get to the next level and those are the things she needs to do.”
Jones started jumping
when she was in fourth grade and running track in sixth grade. Later she started playing soccer, but her mother, Lesharn, a former track sprinter at Buford High in South Carolina, encouraged her to focus on track.
“My mom saw what I could do on the track and she thought I could be special at it one day,” Jones said.
Jones’ mother, now a nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, tries to get to as many of her daughter’s meets as she can.
When she’s not on the track, Jones excels in the
classroom where she has a 4.50 GPA and is a member of the National Honor Society.
Although the pandemic has limited her to only virtual sessions, Jones has volunteered as part of a literacy-outreach program for preschool children as well.
She also wants to be involved in other charity work such as beach cleanups when possible.
As far as the 2021 season, Jones is aiming for more high marks in the high jump and long jump and faster times in both the 200 and the 1,600-meter relay, which she will run along with returning sophomores Somiyah Braggs and Cynteria James on what figures to be another loaded Southridge squad aiming for a state title.
In addition to Braggs and James, the Spartans should also be strong in the hurdles thanks to senior Spirit Morgan and sophomores Kendalle James and Janiyha Scott. Senior Kirsten Rolle and junior Yesenia Benjamin are Southridge’s top returners in the shot put, discus and javelin events.
“We have a lot of talent on this team for sure and we’re definitely looking forward to another big year,” Jones said.
THIS AND THAT
The regular season began on Monday and is scheduled to run through April 10th. Districts will be held April 12-23 with regionals on May 1. Specific dates for the state meets have not been announced but they are scheduled to take place at Percy Beard Stadium on the campus of the University of Florida.
Miami-Dade County’s top-ranked returning sprinter in the girls’ 200 meters is Miami Northwestern’s Lamaria Washington, who had the thirdbest time in the nation last season (23.76). She leads a Bulls squad looking to extend their state-record championship streak to 12 consecutive seasons and add to its state-best total of 16 state championships.
Columbus and Northwestern remain MiamiDade’s state favorites on the boys’ side in Classes 4A and 3A. But Belen Jesuit returns one of the state’s best distance runners in senior Javier Vento. Despite the abbreviated season, Vento ran the seventh-fastest time in the nation in the 1,600 (4:11.20) at the Reggie Johnson Memorial.
The Varela boys are going to have one of the youngest coaching staffs in South Florida. Led by head coach Alejandro Hernandez, the Vipers coaches have an average age of 20. Junior sprinter Andro Blanco and distance runner Osvaldo Cruz are their top athletes.
Carrollton will be led by seniors Madison Roberts (triple jump, high jump), Franki Suarez (3200) and Jacqueline Reed (high jump, long jump) as well as juniors Polina Salas (jumps, hurdles) and Victoria Trap (distance).
Palmer Trinity’s boys will be led by juniors George Stark (800, 1600, 3200) and Brandon Bottinger
(100, 200, high jump), a transfer from Florida Christian, and sophomore Austin Foster (400, 800, discus). The Falcons girls will be led by junior Gaby Dorta, who was ranked 16th in the state in the 300-meter hurdles in Class 1A as a freshman.