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Something in the Water in Chesterfield?

Midlo DadMidlo Dad10,000+ posts
In 2006, Monacan won the AAA state championship.

That summer, Post 186 (comprised primarily of players from Midlothian and Monacan) won the Legion district, state and regional titles before finishing 3d in the Legion World Series.

In 2007, James River took the AAA state championship.

In 2008, many (myself included) felt that Cosby was the team to beat. They faltered at the end, allowing James River to repeat.

This summer, we now have Post 137 (comprised primarily of players from Cosby and Manchester, with 1-2 Clover Hill guys as well) winning the Legion district, state and regional and heading to the Legion World Series this weekend.

And BTW, Manchester looks to be very strong for 2009.

For those not familiar with the local geography, James River, Monacan, Midlothian, Clover Hill, Cosby and Manchester are adjoining school districts covering the more highly populated, rapidly growing northwest portion of Chesterfield County. They and L.C. Bird (the next school district to the south) are the county teams in the Dominion District.

The question I have to ask is: What explains this extraordinary run of success?

I've always thought that in single elimination tourneys (like the high school tournaments), anything could happen. In Legion, the compressed double-elimination format imposes killer obligations on pitchers and pretty much requires you to hit your way through the last games. All in all, I would expect championships to be more randomly distributed around the state over a 3-year period.

Bear in mind that Powhatan, a AA school for the county immediately to the west of the James River, Midlothian and Cosby districts, won the AA state championship this year. So if you look at all this on the state map, you can see the geographic concentration of high school baseball success.

What explains this?
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J JT1,000+ posts
Speaking in terms of legion, NABF has pretty much killed it in the Lynchburg area, where the local HS coaches encourage all their 17-U studs to stay down and play a lesser brand of ball. The top 5 prospective pitchers for Post 16 LAST SUMMER all "played down." That was a loss that was impossible to over come. Similar things happened this year.
EH Emanski's Heroes1,000+ posts
I didn't move to Richmond until 2004, so I followed local baseball from afar as best I could. The thing that's funny to me is, from the outside I always felt like the best baseball was played in the West End of Henrico.

I know this stuff goes in cycles, and there are still strong teams around (Godwin, Deep Run, etc) and Hanover has had some very strong teams as well. But it does seem especially strange that a single district would be so loaded with elite teams for this long.

The weirdest part is that you can't really put your finger on exactly why this is the case. It's not like Chesterfield has all the good coaches around, and there are year-round facilities in all areas of metro Richmond. It would even be easier to explain if it was a single dominant school, but that's not the case either. In the end, I have to assume it's an anomaly, but I guess time will tell.
Midlo DadMidlo Dad10,000+ posts
I'm kind of leaning towards a theory that affluent suburbs spawn high level HS baseball. Not long ago, the epicenter of high income households in the Richmond area was in the west end (Tucker, then Godwin when it opened). Now that has shifted south of the river to where there is more new development. But you do see pockets of strength in other affluent suburban areas. Deep Run and Hanover fit that description. There are signs that Atlee has a strong pipeline in development (their youth leagues have become dominant up to the 14u level; can HS dominance be far behind?).

One solid coach here, one doofus coach there can skew the results of course. You have a guy like Ken Schrad working miracles at Henrico, for instance. But in looking for an explanation for the seeming dominance of NW Chesterfield (and neighboring Powhatan) of late, the only explanation I can come up with is demographics. (I could joke that it's genetics, but that would just be a joke.)

But that still doesn't explain why the Chesterfield teams are winning over teams from, say, Loudoun or Newport News. Is it just a run of luck? I'm wondering if anyone else has an explanation I haven't thought of.
AM AU Marine10+ posts
To add to Midlo's point. Midlothian Post 186 was comprised of this year's Dominion "Bottom Feeders" with Midlo, Clover Hill and Monacan. They still produced a respectful 12-7 record, were the #4 seed for the local tourny, trashed the West End team twice and won out with 8 wins including a win over 137. (RS wasn't throwing out kisses to JL when he was thrown out at third, either).

When Midlo High School traveled outside the District they were flawless against VA rivals and traded wins with this year's repeating AA South Carolina champions. They performed poorly against the quality arms of Dominion and managed a few wins against the other schools at the bottom of the standings with them.

I think it has to do a bit with cycles, but also the core of AAU/Travel Ball players that worked their way up programs South of the River. Dominion has been strong because of several strong and legitmate D1 Pitchers. Even the bottom of the District does well against outsiders because of the Travel ball trained Pitchers. That's my observation.
EH Emanski's Heroes1,000+ posts
Maybe the lack of middle school ball is a good thing (this has been discussed before). I've heard some horror stories about MS ball in Henrico and Hanover, and maybe the Chesterfield kids are better off without it. Maybe some kids on the north side of the river are turned off by a bad first experience with school ball. Perhaps its a benefit to get extra playing experience with the travel teams rather than playing for the guy who drew the short straw at a middle school (I know that's a generalization).
Midlo DadMidlo Dad10,000+ posts
Now that's something I hadn't thought of. I have to admit, I would take many area travel teams in head-to-head matchups with any area middle school teams.

Ages 14u and 15u in particular are when you see travel teams consolidate, so that a few teams gather all the stronger players while others grow weaker or (typically) disband.

But is that something that differentiates Chesterfield from the rest of the state, or is that just a local thing?

And, aren't even those guys who play for middle school teams still playing for travel teams in the summer and fall?
NoVa BaseballNoVa Baseball10+ posts
I'm not sure about the other areas of the state, but in NoVA the best players just don't play for the Legion teams. Unfortunately, the best rising HS Seniors tend to play on showcase teams where they can (presumably) get better exposure to college scouts. As for rising college freshman, this season several of the best players who were already committed to schools signed up with college level leagues (Clark Griffith), or showcase teams. I don't know if this is what accounts for NoVA relatively weak showing at the Legion State level, but it certainly doesn't help.

I am personally a big fan of Legion ball and wish that the best NoVA players would find it more attractive than the showcase teams. Unfortunately, the folks running those teams can point to lots of D1 college signings whereas Post 1976 (this year's NoVA champ) only had three kids playing D3, and a couple playing Club ball at UVA. As long as showcase teams are perceived to be the ticket to a college scholarship, NoVA Legion teams will continue to get thumped at the state level.
Midlo DadMidlo Dad10,000+ posts
I agree with that up to a point. Certainly there is a great deal of "bleed off" to travel teams, especially among those players bound to the Division I level. And with good reason, don't get me wrong; the travel teams go to where the scouts are, whereas you don't see a lot of scouting going on at Legion games (which occur one at a time instead of over a weekend of concentrated games at a scouting venue).

Legion play at the district level is often determined by which posts are able to convince the players from their base schools to come out. For whatever reason, 137 probably came out the best in District 11 in terms of convincing all of the top players from Cosby and Manchester to play Legion this summer. 201 did pretty well in getting players out from James River and Powhatan (the AAA and AA champs), but had 2 of JR's top 3 pitchers decide not to play, got only 1 of the 5 studs to return from the JR class of 2007, and in the end found themselves 1 inning of pitching short of knocking 137 out in the district playoffs.

But if not sooner, then certainly by the time you reach the state level you are dealing with only those Legion teams who got it all together. And at the regional level, you're going to see teams from areas where Legion is still king and the teams still get everyone from their base schools. So while I wouldn't necessarily tout 137's victory at the district level as a great indicator, their success at the state and regional levels is IMHO still significant.

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