IAC BASEBALL: MERGER WILL OFFER CHALLENGES FOR CANDOR, S-VE (2020-03-09)
BY TIM TAYLOR
Tioga County Sports Report
CANDOR / SPENCER — The initial challenge facing the newly-formed SVEC baseball team will be molding one cohesive unit out of players from two neighboring school districts.
During the off-season, the Candor and S-VE school boards voted to merge baseball. This comes on the heels of last year's canceled season due to a shortage of players on the Panthers' roster.
Mergers are nothing new to either district, as they've combined in several sports starting in 2016.
Getting to know the players and how they will fit into the game plan will be the early obstacles.
"I know a lot of them from coaching in both districts," said Cliff Pierce, who is co-coaching the varsity with Ronnie Miller, "but getting to know what some of the guys from Spencer's strengths and weaknesses are as baseball players is, I think, is going to be a challenge."
Miller will have to become familiar with the Candor players, but doesn't expect it to take too long.
"It will take bout a good week probably. It won't be hard. They seem like good kids. It's just going to take some time to learn their names. We're going to be together every day for two to three hours, six days a week, so it won't be that difficult."
He sees a couple of major challenges with making the merger work.
"The camaraderie between the two schools. That's going to be an issue. Some kids aren't playing because they're different schools," he said. "My thought is to get them working together. We're one team, not two teams. That's the biggest challenge I feel we'll ever have.
"Having them believe in themselves that we can win, because both of our programs haven't been that good for years, so we've got to get them to believe that they are capable of winning and being successful."
"Trying to put a competitive team on the field as always is a challenge," Pierce said, "but I think there is going to be a great deal of excitement, which originally we heard a lot of kids were reluctant with the merge, but the kids that are here are really excited. They see it as an opportunity."
Unfortunately for the Eagles, some players opted not to participate in this year's program, but SVEC still has a decent-sized group to fill its varsity and JV rosters with.
Pierce said there are 39 players on the roster.
"From Candor I have six total and I have seven from Spencer I believe, and we've got some newbies," he said.
SVEC has three seniors — returnees Brayden Ferris and Brandon Hoyt, both of whom were IAC all-stars last season, and newcomer Noah Mack.
Among the seniors not returning are Matt Byrne and Nick Thomas.
"I was hoping they were both going to play this year," Pierce said. "We lost some decent players from Candor last year that did a nice job for us."
Pierce expects pitching to be a challenge for the Eagles, especially with the pitch count rule initiated last season, but the addition of Miller should bolster that aspect of the game plan.
"We really need to work on developing pitchers and I think that's where coach Miller is going to do a great job," Pierce said. "He's a D-1 college pitcher and I think he's going bring a lot to the table for those kids and be able to teach them to be good pitchers. He's got a lot of knowledge about pitching."
The Eagles will also move up in classification.
"We are going to play a more difficult schedule than we played last year, which will be a challenge, but we're up for it I guess," Pierce said.
Miller also noted that there will be transportation issues to work out. And not just for games as players will need to be bussed back and forth to practices.
SVEC will play home games at the fields in Candor and Spencer. The early-season games will be held in Spencer as the field drains better.
The Eagles open the season March 31 at perennial Section IV Class C power Sidney.
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IN PHOTO 1: Brayden Ferris. ... PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.
