“The feeling of winning region is great, it lets us know that all of our hard work is finally paying off,” states Thomas Monahon, starting pitcher for the North Augusta High School team. The team’s hard work did pay off, because over the eight games that were played in the region competition North Augusta baseball was able to win over half, leading to ultimately winning out for the entire competition. “It felt really amazing to win region because it hasn’t happened since 2009,” explains Cale Clary, short stop and pitcher. “We saw that we could win, that we could compete against high level teams,” Clary adds. This victory was not taken easily, however. Airport, North Augusta’s strongest rival for the competition, still had to be taken on.
“Airport was the hardest to compete against,” Clary states, “everyone thought they were going to win region, not us.” Despite this knowledge going into North Augusta’s games against Airport, North Augusta emerged victorious. “We were worried about playing Airport. But that was at the beginning of the year. Once we played them, we swept them in the series 2-0,” recalls Monahon, “That victory over Airport definitely gave us the confidence we needed to win region.” Although Airport was the greatest challenger, teams like South Aiken were not easy to overcome. “We had to play a really tough game against South Aiken,” says Monahon, “although it was challenging, we had a game winning hit that put us up 3-2.” The team then continued to play, shutting down South Aiken for the next inning.
“I think our greatest strength is our pitching,” states Clary. Monahon agrees and adds that, “the pitchers were able to keep us in during some tight games.” This strength will be continuously improved upon as the team begins practice in hopes of winning playoffs. As the team continues to practice, Monahon suggests for players that are trying to move up to varsity in the future to, “take every practice seriously. Even on days where your head’s not in it.” With those words in mind, the North Augusta baseball team continues to practice in order to do their best in the upcoming playoff games.
Pictured: NAHS Baseball Team
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