2021 High School Senior Day

Ours was the last home regular season game that took place on a Friday, same as in past years.

Our school has done its senior night festivities for every other sport this year the night of the first game with the exception of baseball and softball.  Softball did theirs in the middle of the season, ours is this Friday our last home game of the year, but we also only have one senior who has never played for the school before anyway.

We did our senior day early in the season......We felt the school district was so jacked up, the season could end in at any moment, for any obscure irrelevant reason.

My son's team had it about mid-season. The AD scheduled it for the worst home opponent so the seniors could have a chance to start.

My son's senior night was last Monday 4/26 which was the 2nd to last home game.  Last night was the last home game but it was used to honor the school's baseball coach who retired after 2019.  He was there 26 years and collected a lot of hardware.  They wanted to do it last spring, but Covid shelved it.  District seeds/pairings come out out tomorrow and Districts will be wrapped up by Sunday.  Next weekend is State and that'll be all she wrote for high school baseball here in Nebraska.

After State is done, the mass scatter/exodus occurs.  Most of the best players bolt for travel ball leaving legion ball a shell of what it once was here.  Up until a couple years ago, legion still ruled the summer roost here.  High school baseball would end, everyone would put on their legion uniforms and baseball continued with all the same teams and coaches.  Simply a different official name, but otherwise a direct continuation of the spring high school season.  What we have now is a very unhealthy distaste by high school coaches to those who "stole" their best players who wanted to be recruited more than they valued loyalty to their high school coaches and teammates.

The high school in my district screwed up this year. They set senior night for the last game of the season. It ended up being a must win game to make the playoffs. Most of the seniors did not get a chance to play (only one has been a starter all season). They won the game by 1 run, to make it into the playoffs. Sad for the seniors but happy the team made it. First time making playoffs in several years.

Coach added an extra Saturday game towards the end of the season.  Game will be part of the total W-L record, but not count towards playoffs.  Arranged with another school that agreed to play all seniors and just have fun.  Will be good for our team.  Only 2 seniors play.  The rest of the starters are all 2022 & (sometimes) one 2024. Hoping to give them all one last memory!

DanJ, sounds like the high school coaches need to do a heart check.  Is it about them and their programs or about the players best interests?  My son played legion but only when he was not playing travel.  If he had ever had to choose between high school ball and travel it would have been a no brainer and he would have chosen travel.  High School is a part of the journey for some and an end of a journey for others.  Those that it is part of the journey need travel ball which is also part of the journey.  The same for college.  For some it is the end and others a part along with summer ball.  I know some smaller college coaches that do not want their players playing summer ball.  Others would not allow their players not to play summer.

I'm the head baseball coach and athletic director at my school.  We decided as a school we were going to have our senior night the very first home game just in case something bad happened.  In NC we were only allowed 14 games and most of the time it was just conference games since we have 8 teams in our conference.  It has worked out very well for us and I actually hope we continue it next year because we will have our non-conference schedule back so a loss here doesn't hurt as much as a conference game would be.

We have schools around us who waited until the end who either did not get to have their recognition or had to do it during a first round home playoff game.  It just made sense to me to have it the first game after last year.  Speaking of last year we got lucky because our last game after hearing we were going to shut down was an away game.  Their coach contacted me and said they were going to do a "just in case senior night" for his kids and wanted to know if we wanted to recognize our kids.  We scrambled together something and for how quick it was set up it worked very well.  Such a classy move by that school

@PitchingFan Oh, there's no doubt it's about them and their programs.  I can't defend the piece about it being about them, but the program piece, I get.  It's not lost on me that a long-standing tradition - summer legion ball in Nebraska - is dying on the vine.  Baseball seems to inject lots of emotions in people when it leaves something behind and is forced to move on and modernize.  I think most can appreciate that.  But when something is lost, it's lost.  Nebraska has 173 legion teams.  California has 25.  Texas has 4.  Only Minnesota still has more than Nebraska with 330.  But high school coaches here are fighting (and whining) tooth and nail to try to save it.  But they're failing badly.  Many of them, my son's high school coach included, TRULY believe the outdated, tired cliché of "if you're good enough, they'll find YOU" deal.  My son's coach points to Philly Darin Ruf (graduated HS in 2005) and Matt Waldron (graduated HS in 2015, drafted 18th rd 2019 by Padres) as examples that "prove" his point.  "Those guys didn't need to play travel ball and were still found!"  All you can do is shake your head.  When I shared this with my 2021's future coach - he's playing JUCO ball this fall - he just scoffed.  Then he said that if my son hadn't played travel ball last summer, there was no way my son would be attending the school he is.  He said "there's no way I am driving 9 hours round trip to watch you play a legion baseball game."  He wasn't being a jerk, he was being honest.

It's gotten to the point around here that some coaches tell their players they won't play in the spring season if they don't stick around for legion ball in the summer.  So what happens?  You see lots of kids transferring to high schools where the coaches don't draw that hard line in the sand.  I think it's laughable that these guys think they can intimate these kids into submission.  Like it or not, this generation doesn't value loyalty the way some previous generations did.  But there isn't a thing any coach can do to change that now.  That ship has long since sailed.

Loyalty is a two way street.  I absolutely expect my kids to be loyal to me during my season.  Once my season is over it's their time.  Do I want them to play for me this summer?  It depends on if the level of play my summer team provides is what they need and for my varsity guys it's usually not.  My summer talent is usually closer to JV level baseball - which I'm totally fine with because I use that time to help them get better.  But my varsity guys need to play at a higher level to get better but also increase their chances at going to the next level. 

Times change and the old American Legion guys just want to keep their dream from back in the day alive.