Baseball – Last year OC’s baseball team had a tough year in terms of wins and losses. This will be the last season OC will have to face teams like Elbert Co, North Oconee, Jackson Co etc. Those teams will move up to the AAA classification while the Patriots will stay at the AA level. Nevertheless, as head baseball coach Jason Bramlett says, “You have to play the cards dealt you.”
Coach Bramlett, who has been coaching high school baseball for 10 years, with the last five as head coach at Oglethorpe County High School said, “Last year was a tough year. It seems like we have a good year then a tough year. We went 6-19 but I felt like we played a lot better at the end. What really hurt us was getting out of a big inning, that one play on the field or that one pitch we needed to get off the field. I was proud of the way our guys finished up. So I feel like we can move into this year with a pretty good outlook.”
“One of the things we have to do is be consistent on defense”, says Coach Bramlett. “We have to do the basics right. It’s always nice to see a player make an outstanding defensive play, but if we make the routine defensive plays all the time we’ll win games. We are also working on being more aggressive on the base paths. We work on that every year and this is still a ‘work-in-progress’ and the guys coming back will be pretty good at that.”
Another facet of the game Coach Bramlett keeps up with is performance at the plate. It’s not just a batting average anymore. It’s what a player does at the plate and how a player gets on base. Bramlett says that a player might be hitting .300, but that means that seven out of ten times he didn’t get a hit. So what did he do those seven times? “Did he move a runner or strike out?” explains Coach Bramlett. “Are you doing things to help the team along the way, and that’s the whole point. So if we don’t get a hit we have to make our at-bats productive. Does a runner get on base from a walk or an error, or being hit by a pitch? And did he move a runner already on base?”
In the field Bramlett doesn’t want to see a lot of walks, he wants opponents to have to handle the ball making plays. “It’s not just our athletes but athletes across the state (referring to inconsistent routine plays), says Bramlett. “Make them make the play. Make other people try and get you out.” Coach Bramlett feels that the other team will make mistakes which will benefit Oglethorpe.
Coach Bramlett lost three seniors from last year but has four returning seniors this year, Tee Hull, J. D. Sharp, Christian Conrad and J.R. LaFluer. “We have a big nucleus of sophomore/junior class,” says Coach Bramlett. “We have 11 returning players this year. I’ve been looking at that for the past couple of weeks and that should be something that’s very good for us. That means there will be competition at a lot of different positions. That’s what you want, you want these guys coming out here and pushing each other and working hard. I don’t know where anybody is going to play. It’s going to be a puzzle. But it’s a good problem to have. The more versatile they can be the better off we’ll be.”
With so many underclassmen Coach Bramlett will be looking to his seniors to provide leadership on the field. “We expect the seniors to provide leadership,” remarks Bramlett. “But at the same time we don’t mind if a sophomore or a junior steps up. We have a pretty good chemistry among our guys. We do look to the juniors and senior but we encourage anybody to lead. If they see you working hard and doing the right things those guys will follow what you’re doing.”
When asked about his JV team Coach Bramlett was optimistic. “JV is looking good, they did pretty well last year going 5-3. We had a few rainouts that we couldn’t reschedule but that’s how that is,” says Bramlett. “We have a couple of guys who may challenge for varsity spots and we have a couple of guys who may float between JV and varsity. This year is also the first year that the middle school will have a baseball team, so we won’t be carrying any eight graders.
One of the challenges that OC faces this season is the stiff competition of the present region. “Nine of the thirteen teams in the region will move up to AAA next year”, Coach Bramlett said. “It’s a tough region, especially our side of the sub-region. Hart Co won the region last season, they have a tough baseball team. I expect North Oconee, Elbert, Hart and Jefferson to be tough again this year. To work in to our region tournament we’ve got to beat the teams we aren’t supposed to be and still beat those even with us or behind us.”
“We open our region schedule against North Oconee”, continues Coach Bramlett. “They’re going to be tough but we did manage to beat them last year. Our region schedule will be different this year because we are playing everybody back to back. This is something the region coaches decided to do to make sure that one team was not throwing their ace pitcher against another team every time.”
Regarding the new region line-up for next year Coach Bramlett thinks that OC will be competitive. “We’re playing teams that we’ve played in the past, they are more local. We have Green Co, Social Circle and Washington-Wilkes in our sub-region. We should do pretty well if we have a good year this year especially since our big junior class will be seniors,” says coach Bramlett.
The Patriots have eight games scheduled before their region opener against North Oconee. The season opener will be against Washington-Wilkes on Thursday, February 16th at WW. OC’s first home game will be the following Tuesday, February 21, against Putnam Co.
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