Trumansburg baseball experiencing breakout year

Trumansburg baseball has had an excellent start to the season, going 5-0 to lead its five-team IAC division in the early going. This is a new-look team for the Blue Raiders that’s finding success, with just three returning players from last baseball season, two years ago, and a total of five seniors on this year’s roster.

Through five games, Trumansburg has allowed just 10 runs while the offense has scored 25. With that in mind, the key to success this season has been fairly obvious for head coach Scott Voorhees.

“It’s 100% been our pitching,” Voorhees said. “We’ve had three guys that have really stepped up and delivered some really important innings for us so far. We certainly aren’t out-hitting other teams right now. So the fact is we’ve got three guys that have just been studs on the mound and have been standing out.”

The three pitchers who have excelled so far for Trumansburg are Ethan Fulton, Lucas Taves and Tanner Potter. Voorhees called the three returners diamond dogs, or the baseball equivalent of gym rats, then went into detail about Fulton’s growth as a junior.

“Ethan certainly will go to the end of the world for baseball,” Voorhees said. “He just loves the game. It shows because he’s just grown. I thought he was good as a freshman — we didn’t have a very good season — but he’s grown so much over the last two years. It’s just incredible.”

Considering the strong returning players on this year’s team, Voorhees lamented that he couldn’t have a season last year with a few standout seniors that have since graduated like Conor Baird and Ethan Peck.

“Some of the guys that missed out on their senior year, it was really disappointing because I think we had an opportunity to step back into being competitive compared to what we were in 2019,” he said. “There are just a number of kids that I’m really disappointed didn’t get to see us step back into competitive baseball after taking a hard year the year before.”

Trumansburg’s division this season includes Lansing, Thomas A. Edison (TAE), Newark Valley and Tioga. All four of those teams reached the Section IV tournament in 2019 with Lansing and TAE making it to the semifinals and Tioga winning the championship. Trumansburg was on the outside looking in that postseason.

With wins over all four of those teams this year and a second one against TAE this week, the locker room is beaming with confidence.

“It’s been upbeat,” Voorhees said. “They enjoy coming together and practicing and get excited for games. There’s confidence, but I think that they take it to a moderate level. I don’t think they’re overconfident. I think that we’re prepared each day to have a tough opponent. Our division is really tough. We went through the first four beating each team, and we know it’s going to be tough to repeat that again.”

Voorhees isn’t letting himself get overconfident either, setting his goals for the season one at a time after missing the Section IV tournament two years ago.

“We continue playing the way we are and IACs are right within our reach if we take care of our own business here,” he said. “I don’t think too much beyond that. But I hope that we would be competitive in sectionals after that.” 

Another positive aspect of this season that Voorhees touched on is the academic performance of his athletes throughout all the challenges of the pandemic. 

“One of the things that we think has been really positive about getting sports back again has been our academic performance from these kids because this has been really tough and some were lacking motivation,” Voorhees said. “We’ve found as a school, and I know within our program, we’re really glad to see sports back and motivating the kids to be eligible and do better in their classes. We’ve had some really good rebounds from our student-athletes.”

On the field, the success has been a pleasant surprise for Voorhees after heading into the season with many unknowns.

“There are only three guys that I’ve coached before,” he said. “So that was a shock. At one point early on I said to [assistant coach] Mike Flood that this is like a brand new team. I didn’t know how the pieces were going to fit together. We don’t have a lot of numbers, but everyone seemed to fall into place. I think some of that’s been surprising with just how well they’ve meshed.”

This year has the makings of the beginning of an era of success for Trumansburg baseball, with strong talent coming up from the modified and JV levels over the next few seasons. For now, Trumansburg will look to stay undefeated when they face Tioga, the defending Section IV champions, Wednesday, May 19.