Lansing baseball team exceeds expectations

By Will LeBlond
 
Uncertainty loomed over coach Stu Dean and the Lansing High School baseball team following their Section IV Tournament semifinal loss to Sidney to end the 2015 season.
 
Dean had plenty of reasons to be anxious; his Bobcats squad entered the tourney as the top seed and were now finished after a one-run loss to the fifth-seeded Warriors. With the defeat, Lansing also lost six seniors, all starters, who went on to graduate from the school just a short period of time later.
 
Fast-forward nine months to the beginning of the new baseball season and Dean is fielding a younger team, which altered his expectations. “If you told me at the beginning of the year that we would be in the Section IV championship, I would have been pretty happy with that,” he says.
 
If Lansing wanted to defy the odds and make that trip to the sectional title game, the three seniors on the club needed to show the way, which is exactly what the older group did. Seniors Ben Kutler, Jared Strait and Corbin Atkins were tasked with incorporating a young group of players into the varsity program, but, according to Kutler, the trio tackled the challenge.
 
“We knew that starting two sophomores and a freshman was going to be tough, so we really had to welcome them in and get them going with what we’re trying to do,” Kutler says.
 
According to Dean, that transition into playing at the highest level of high school baseball was made far smoother by his coaching staff. “That’s a compliment to Dan Cheatham, our JV coach, and my two assistants, Mike Herzog and Brett Hotchkiss,” he says. “They know the routine and what we expect from our players and they were a big part of our success.”
 
Even with a new crop of players that had to accustom themselves to the varsity game, Kutler believes that expectations are consistent every season for the program as a whole. “The expectations are the same. You can cut them a little more slack because they’re younger, but it’s still the same expectations,” he says.
 
In Kutler’s eyes, the expectation is a division title and a deep run in the sectional tournament, which was attained for the Bobcats after they put a 10-0 beat down on Moravia in the Section IV semifinal round after they took home the division crown following a 16-3 regular season mark. Their most important win of the regular season came on the road against Union Springs on May 10, which earned Lansing the tiebreaker in the division.
 
The road to that postseason success was bumpy, but Dean was patient with his team in the early going. “It was a learning curve for all of those younger guys, so we went through some growing pains early on,” says the coach. That growth showed up at the right time to help the Bobcats with their win over Moravia to earn them a sectional championship game against Tioga.
 
The Section IV Class C title game against Tioga turned out to be the final stop on the season’s ride, as Tioga’s Parker Hendershot twirled a one-hit shutout to help the Tigers to their second straight sectional championship with a 3-0 win over Lansing.
 
Even with that defeat to conclude the high school careers of the Bobcats’ three seniors, they still had perspective regarding what accomplished with what they were given to begin the campaign.
 
“I definitely think we maximized our ability as a team and taking a step further from last year was definitely a big step,” says Kutler.
 
Now, the program looks to duplicate their success and even take a step further in winning a section IV title, but the legacy left by the team’s three departing seniors will go leaps and bounds in helping the next wave of Bobcats.
 
“Hopefully the kids that were juniors this year paid attention to the way our three seniors conducted themselves and how they went about improving themselves both individually and as a team,” says Dean.
 
In looking forward to next year, the younger players, such as Garrett Bell behind the plate and Lansing Miller in center field took, massive steps in their development, according to Dean, and the 2017 campaign looks bright right now, but there is a process to all success and Dean wants to make sure that his players understand that.
 
“Hopefully they don’t underestimate the importance of the senior leadership that they got this year, just because we have more numbers, doesn’t necessarily equate to more success for next year,” he says.
Baseball games are not always won during the season, and Dean hopes that the team will make strides in the weight room to help along next year’s squad, “It comes down to how kids approach things in the offseason,” he says.