Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Mitch Cameron Interview Part Two Coming Home
COACH RETURNS TO PRAIRIE GROVE BASEBALL
PRAIRIE GROVE — Enterprise-Leader sports editor Mark Humphrey recently interviewed Prairie Grove head baseball coach Mitch Cameron, who returned to the program with his hiring by the school board May 21 following four seasons at Rogers Heritage. The following is a transcript of part two from that interview.
WCEL: “You’re stepping into a situation here that there were things that you had no control over, that you had nothing to do with that created some negative issues. Do you see healing taking place and hope being restored with the boys in the program?”
Mitch Cameron: “I wasn’t here. I don’t know about the past. The only thing that I can do is just preach what we can control. The only things we can control is our attitude, we can control our training, we can control trusting. We can control those things. We can’t dwell on the past and find ways to solve the problem. We’re problem-solvers, we’ve got to dwell on that more than anything … I tell the boys, ‘Everything that’s happened, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Let’s move forward. Here’s how we’re going to approach going forward.’ So that’s where we are, and they’ve done that so far. I believe this is our second week of working out with them, and I’ve seen nothing but great attitude out of them. Their effort and their attitudes are perfect, ‘yes sir, no sir,’ and they’re getting after it. That’s all we can ask and we won’t look at the past. We just keep moving forward.”
WCEL: “Let me ask you about your rivalry with Farmington. Prairie Grove has not beaten the Cardinals since you left and this last year when Farmington beat them, they had won every game all the way through the sports school year from grades 7-12 in all sports, and that is obviously something Prairie Grove is not satisfied with.”
Mitch Cameron: “No, we’re not happy with that. I can remember going back to my first couple years here, two years, I don’t know that we beat them either. I think we won one game against them and then we rattled off three or four years where they had beat us for three or four years so it’s obviously a rivalry. I have much respect for Coach (Jay) Harper and Coach (Clint) Scrivner over there. They do a great job and that fact that we’re so close and our kids know each other, obviously that’s games we want to win and we always put a circle on our calendar to win and it makes it even more exciting with the fans and everything else. But, at the end of the day, our focus and our vision is to win championships, and I can remember times where we were playing Shiloh and we would get beat ‘cause we wouldn’t throw the right guys because we wanted to save those guys for the trophy win. That’s what it’s about, it’s about winning trophies and it’s about these guys having fun and success. Whatever we got to do, if that means we got to lose a game to Farmington to get to where we need to be we may do that, but at the end of the day, we want to make sure we’re in the playoffs at the end. During conference season the way you do that is to beat Farmington so we’ll make sure we bring that.”
WCEL: “That being said, we’re talking about the knowledgeability of some of the fans. They’ll understand when you make some of those moves cause they’re so savvy about baseball.”
Mitch Cameron: “They are and a lot of that comes down to communication between me and them is making sure they understand where we are or where I am and sending out emails and letting them understand, ‘Hey, this is our plan. This is why we did some of the things we did this weekend or this week.’ Just keeping them informed. It’s a new day. The parents need to be involved and they need to have a little bit of stake in the matter and that’s one way we can get that for them. And so they understand and it makes them more excited and they understand when we do certain things. It’s a different game and to be able to adjust and for them to know that and they are baseball savvy and they know when to win and when we’re doing things and so that makes it fun.”