DEWITT, N.Y. (NCC News) – It’s been nearly two years since the last time the Jamesville-Dewitt High School Red Rams met another team on the diamond. That last time, in 2019, they lost the state sectional title. It was painful for 16-year coach Ryan Dera and his players, but not as painful as what came the following year.
Like most high school baseball teams around the country, the Red Rams never had a season in 2020 thanks to COVID-19. For the first time in years, players like shortstop Matt Alexander spent the spring between the arm rests of their couch rather than between the foul lines on the field. Alexander said he expected the shutdown as the threat of the pandemic became more and more real. And yet, after just a few weeks away from the game, he said the weight of the season’s cancellation began to hit him hard.
“It wasn’t completely devastating until about three weeks in. And three weeks in I was just kinda rolling through days like ‘what am I doing?’ Without baseball, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Alexander said.
Alexander was just a sophomore when the Red Rams lost that state sectional game – the only sophomore on that varsity team. That means that, now a senior, Alexander is the only player on the team that has seen action in a varsity baseball game before this year. Although he’s talkative, energetic and always smiling on the baseball field, he’s taken a necessary leadership role in his last season before he heads off to play baseball at Bucknell University next fall.
As a Friday afternoon practice came near its close just a week before the team’s first scheduled game, Coach Dera pulled his team into a huddle near home plate. The team had hit, fielded and even played itself in an intrasquad scrimmage. But before he sent his players home, his attention turned to the youngest player on the team, a skinny freshman infielder named Aidan.
He told Aidan to go out to the second base position and the rest of the team to the shortstop position to cheer him on as Dera hit 12 ground balls to Aidan. For each error he made, the team would run one “pole” – each player would run from home plate to the right field foul pole and back. The team had already completed one pole before Dera challenged the freshman. The team cheered as Aidan completed the challenge, despite making three errors. Before the team ran, Dera gave him one more challenge.
He could let the team run the poles as set. Or, he could take one more grounder. If he fields it cleanly, the three errors are erased and the team goes home. If he commits an error, the team’s poles double to six. His initial thought was to let the team run without the extra challenge.
“Wrong answer. Get back out there,” Dera said.
He fielded the final play successfully and the team cheered and mobbed him on the infield dirt. When they met on the mound at the end of practice, Dera explained why he singled out the young ballplayer and why his choice for one final play was never really a choice.
“This game is all about pressure and how you handle pressure,” he said. “We love this game because of the challenge. No matter what, we always got your back,” he said as he pointed to Aidan.
A year ago, that challenge was getting through a spring without baseball. Now, that challenge is a much more comfortable one for Dera’s Red Rams: securing a ball in your glove while your teammates cheer you on.
After Dera’s sermon, Alexander brought the team into a tight huddle on the mound and left closing thoughts to his teammates.
“Pick Aidan up. He did a great job. He did a way better job than I did when I was younger,” he said before beginning the team’s motto while his teammates joined in.
“All heart, together, can’t lose.”
