Sagemont Prepared To Defend Its District Title
It is a younger group that makes up the Sagemont roster this season, and it is a group that is ready to surprise people.
It’s a different mindset coming into this season. Sagemont is coming off a tremendous 2014 campaign in which it won the district and advanced to the regional semifinals. It was an exciting run that made the program proud. But now most of those starters are gone, and the roster is a much younger group this season.
The guys’ youth brings a different excitement back to practice for Manager Wesley Morejon and his staff. There is a lot more instruction and the coaches really have to be on their toes to make sure they know what they are saying so the guys can follow along.
“Patience is going to be a virtue this season,” Morejon said. “It’s a young group so I’m expecting some mistakes. It’s a young group with a good head on their shoulders.”
Even though they are young and relatively inexperienced, a look around the field easily shows that these young guys can play. The neighborhood is a hotbed for baseball talent, and these guys could quickly become household names at the high school level. The guys have bonded quickly and they are quickly becoming a team together.
“We love playing the game,” said senior Stefan Revelo. “We are coming out here every day and having fun with it. If you find one of us in school you will always find three or four of us baseball players together. It’s a family here and we’re always together as one.”
Morejon believes in structure, that it is an important part of learning the game and also applying to life. Everyday the players come to his office and sign in, and he will discuss the plans for the day with his team. This way everybody is on the same page, and this tends to translate all the way through practice.
The players seem to respond to this approach.
“Coach is very organized and everyday he makes us sign in and it bring us together and he tells us what’s going on that day,” Revelo said. “Him, Chewie and Coach Angel are always working hard and they are just trying to make us better and teaching us the game we love.” 
After graduating seven seniors, there are many positions up for grabs. The players respond everyday in practice and are battling for positions. The coaches like seeing this feistiness; if they are used to that battle with their own guys when it goes to an opponent they are not going to want to lose there either.
Guys last year knew they had some seniors ahead of them, and although those seniors brought it out of them to work hard they knew there was a ceiling. Coming in this year everything is wide open, so that hunger is there for people to run away with a position.
It is a fundamental style of baseball that the program employs. Coaches are not asking guys to run around the field like superheroes. They just want them to make the routine plays.
“We focus on the simple things. We don’t try to get too cute out here; we do the basic plays and the standard fundamentals,” Morejon said. “As long as you take care of those things the great play will come. Just make the routine plays. That’s what we harp on is the routine plays, the routine practice performance and having a structure.”
Leadership is as important as always. This season the Lions will count heavily on three veteran seniors in centerfielder Chris Iacono, catcher Edison Rodriguez and the versatile infielder Revelo. So far these three guys have proven up to the task.
“I saw a lot of my close friends that were captains last year and I saw what they did,” said Rodriguez. “So I try to at least go as they did effort-wise and being vocal. I am trying my best to see how far I can take the team. Especially me and the kids that were here before, we want it more. We have better younger talent coming in so hopefully kids can mature before the end of the season and play better.”
The biggest area the team needs rapid growth is on the mound, where it graduated most of the innings from last season. The club will go with a committee of pitchers early on and give everyone a chance to grab the reigns. This approach worked last year and they are hoping that hurlers such as Niko Larantakis, Adrian Parker and new freshman left-hander Adam Tulloch can seize their chances.
It wasn’t that long ago that the same guys that just won a district championship were the new guys learning the varsity game. They have proven what can be earned with hard work, and they paved the path for the current guys to follow. 
“Those seniors left behind a good model,” said Morejon. “They had been here for so long that they led by their own and I didn’t have to jump in as much. So hopefully the juniors and seniors this year were able to feed off of them and bring some of that to the table as we get going. They are maybe not as vocal and they are quiet still, but they are leading by example. At least they are doing that.”
Morejon knows what they were able to accomplish last year is everyone’s goal at the onset. It is going to be tough to recapture that magic with a new group. But these young guys are hungry to live up to what those seniors left behind.
“We shocked some people last year and we definitely want to do it again this year,” said Revelo. “We want to win districts and hopefully go to regionals and beyond. Losing a lot of seniors we are a very young team this year, but these guys can play. They are very hard-nosed kids and they want to come out here and work hard. They’re young, but these kids can surprise you.”
Contact - About - Advertising - Disclaimer - Copyright © 2018 HSBN Broward - All Rights Reserved
