Coconut Creek Ready To Shine Under New Manager Perez

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It is a new era for the Coconut Creek baseball team.

Following a change in managers, the returning players made the decision to recruit some new blood to help bring the club along. After longtime manager Roger Davidson was not retained following the Cougars’ 4-17 campaign in 2013, the school recently hired Pete Perez to man the position. Perez has burst onto the scene to find an eager and athletic group of unlikely friends who have all joined the team hungry to work and turn the program back around.

The team has over 20 players on its roster, and they also will field a junior varsity team for the first time in roughly a decade. There is a strong vibe among the guys and excitement permeates strongly through every second of each practice. Coach Perez came out of retirement for this opportunity, after previous coaching stints at Ransom Everglades and Coral Gables in Miami. He is there bright and early every morning and does not leave until late at night, and then he just can’t wait to get back there the next morning.

This thrill is exactly the motivating factor that enticed Perez in the first place.

“To have the opportunity to succeed a gentleman like Roger Davidson is just something I couldn’t pass up,” said Perez. “I am fortunate to have a bunch of kids who are buying into the system and buying into everything we do. There is only one way to go and that is up. We’re trying to build a baseball culture, a baseball family. During lunch they sign in and hang out, where they would never have been friends together before. Now they are teammates.”

The Cougars also have a place that they can sign in and share together as a team. Perez helped to organize an initiative to clear out an old storage shed in their dugout and converted it into a team clubhouse. After being forced to share the locker room with the football team and others, the players now have a space all their own. It has taken little time for them to gel together as friends and brothers in the Cougars family.

The team has shaken the rust and dust off everything to help restore some shine. They have added a net behind the backstop, which will save a fortune on baseballs alone. They found three rundown, nonfunctional pitching machines in storage and rebuilt them into one functional machine they now are able to use. They also recovered a batter’s bubble and restored it to working order for practices.

Beyond the unity it has built, these examples have also worked wonders to bring pride to the program.

“That’s how we’re going to get through the hard times,” Perez said. “It’s so much to see kids that want to play, that want to work. They’ll do anything we ask them to do. They’re respectful and everything is ‘yes sir’. I give a lot of tribute to all the other coaches that they’ve played here for. It’s humbling and it’s refreshing.”

The core of this group centers around a handful of returning players, who have taken the leadership role upon themselves. They may lack experience, but they boast plenty of athleticism and energy. It will be important for the veterans to lead the way and help groom them along with their baseball knowledge.

The guy right in the middle of everything is senior captain Jose Baez, a shortstop and right-handed pitcher who is a humble hard worker that everyone looks up to. Standing at an even six feet and weighing roughly 200 pounds, Baez is a presence on the mound while still being graceful and athletic fielding the ball.

“I really like the leadership role I play on this team,” said Baez. “I like helping others, and they end up helping me too. There are a lot of guys out here who really want to play. It’s a really good feeling and we can do something special this year. We’re excited.”

With only three seniors and two juniors, even many of the younger guys have stepped forward to set the right example. Sophomore Dalton Kazmarik started all last year as a freshman, and now he is a crucial piece of the puzzle. The third baseman appreciates how driven his new manager and new teammates all are, and he is ready to play a big role for the next few years with them.

“Since Coach first got here, on the very first day it was a six-hour practice and then everyday since the same,” Kazmarik said. “We finished in May and didn’t do anything all summer, but now we are working hard. These guys just keep coming out and we are having fun here. We just want to help to restore the glory back to this school.”

As often happens in schools across the state, a program such as Coconut Creek’s has always struggled to retain the players that live within their school district. But in the case of Kazmarik, he made the decision to come to this school and help pave the way for other guys to embrace the chance to attend such a good school while being part of a special opportunity for the rebirth of Cougars baseball.

“With this special program I am in, I can graduate high school with an Associate’s Degree,” Kazmarik explained. “So I wanted to come here and try to get them back on track. I can’t wait for these three years; these are going to be the best three years of baseball for me.”

Kazmarik, Baez and sophomores Winston Nunez and Jared Miller represent the veterans amongst a roster built primarily of underclassmen. The entire outfield will be manned by freshmen, with Emmanuel Green likely in centerfield and Andre Martinez and Adrian Williams filling the corners. Senior Juan Fermaint looks to earn the starting catcher’s role, while fellow senior Jean Dennie has joined the team with an eye on starting somewhere in the infield.

Of all the many personalities on this club, none is quite as charismatic as that of their new first baseman Marcus Johnson. The junior moved to the area from Niagara Falls this summer and he is relishing the chance to play the game he loves year round now. Although he was a catcher for his previous team, Johnson is just excited to begin the season while the rest of the country waits months to thaw out from winter first.

“If I was in New York right now, I’d be in a gym somewhere,” Johnson joked. “I feel like a kid in a candy store. It started for me during football season, but once I put that Cougar on my chest I just give my all for my team. Whatever I can do to help them get to the level that they want to be, I’m going to do it. I feel like I can be a contribution to this team that’s going to help them get there.”

It is no small task that the Cougars face on the road ahead. They now find themselves playing in the toughest district in the state, a district that includes four-time defending state champion Archbishop McCarthy and perennial powerhouse American Heritage. They expect to have their ups and down during the season, even while eagerly striving to improve on their 10 total wins over the last three seasons.

Together the Cougars have begun to build an identity, and Perez is hopeful their unity will get them through the bumps in the road. The goal is to be competitive and gain experience, while building the groundwork for seasons to come. Eventually the team expects to see a different story told through the development of their younger players. In the meantime, their friendship will get them through the growing pains they will likely face in their difficult district.

“It’s a great learning experience for these kids, because that’s who we want to be,” explained Perez. “The only way to be like them is to play them. That’s our barometer, so if we can learn from them that is what our program needs to do. We’re not going to get any better playing at the bottom, and we have nothing to lose in playing them.”

Coach Perez has a saying he learned from his father, which is that baseballs are round but they come in square boxes. This analogy fits the unorthodox nature of their ballclub, and they have embraced the fact that the strength of their chemistry comes in how so many different personalities have bonded together to create the team environment. Now the goal is to focus that chemistry and learn how to play together based on that established trust.

Leaders like Baez help to make that a reality. The senior sets the tone for hard work, often staying after to work with players who want the extra reps.

“I try to show them what to do and the best way in hitting the ball,” Baez said. “I’m always practicing; even when I go home I am practicing. I like helping this team, and one of my goals is to not strike out, so I am working on that too.”

Another key cog in the machine has been the addition of Carl McKinney to the coaching staff. The former Cougar starter who graduated after last season has returned to his alma mater to become an excellent teacher and motivator. Perez admits that McKinney deserves much of the credit for anything that the team accomplishes.

How much success the Cougars can achieve this year remains to be seen. Perez is selling his team on the motivation that nobody believes in them, that no one expects them to contend in their district anytime soon. Meanwhile he prefers that they remain an anonymous snake in the grass that can be dangerous because it is never seen before it attacks.

“I don’t want anybody to know about us,” Perez said. “We may not challenge for districts, but we’re going to scare people as the year goes on. When we pull up and 25 kids pile off the bus before a game, people will know that the times are changing.”

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