Faith Lutheran baseball coach reflects on lost season for seniors

Seniors on this year’s Faith Lutheran varsity baseball team had experienced the highs and lows of competition coming into this season, combining for nine total wins their first two years on the squad before going 12-1 as league champions last season.

Returning for their senior year as the team to beat had the makings of being one to remember, but the season was canceled only five games into the schedule due to the coronavirus. The Crusaders Head Coach David Anderson would like to remember the times they had together as a team.

“This group of seniors had a wild high school career. It would have been very exciting to see what we could accomplish this year with most of our team returning,” Anderson said, adding he would miss the personalities of this year’s group. “Every year is different and this year we had a lot of different guys growing into themselves as men which made practice and bus rides a ton of fun. Without a doubt we’ll miss that camaraderie we had built over four years with the group.”

The team had nine seniors: Conor Moore, Mikey Flynn, Mark Aguilar, Michael Rice, Carson Bonus, TJ Foth, Kay Jae Moo Young, Vance Serrano and Aidan Martin.

It’s a difficult conversation to have for a coach, telling his team that the season they had practiced for had been taken from the them through no fault of their own, but Anderson said his focus on philosophy helped prepare his student athletes for when their playing time would come to an end, even if it came sooner than anyone could have expected.

During the fall and winter, Anderson would have his athletes read quotes from famous philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius during practice and have them briefly explain them to the team “in terms of life and baseball.”

“Our central theme was to control what you can control and live within the parameters given to you,” Anderson said. “I think our seniors have prepared for the day they were told they couldn’t come back to the yard. Though they didn’t want to have it this early, they have managed it well with reason. Only a select few get to walk away on their terms, most of us have the game taken from us. Our seniors are reasonably frustrated with how it came about but every one I have talked to has remembered their time for how it was not for how it ended.”

There is still baseball ahead for six of the team’s nine seniors, who intend on extending their playing careers into college at various levels. The coach said while not all of them had decided which schools they were going to yet, those six seniors had “found the path they want to go down” and were lucky that their options we lined up before the season was cut short. For the other three seniors whose time on the diamond ended with the truncated season, Anderson credited them for working hard to carve out their spots on the team.  “Those guys were our glue, kept the practices and games fun and made the team gel together.”