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Greenwood is in the middle of its first-ever baseball season.
This year has been full of ups and downs, but along the way, the Blue Jays are surprising some people.
Just weeks before Greenwood started their inaugural baseball season its head coach stepped down for health reasons. With a short time b before the start of practice, the school looked at former Nevada and Carthage coach Chris Adams.
“So, the season was up in the air, they came to me they knew I had a baseball background, and I was already teaching there,” Adams said.
Adams took the job and the challenges that came with it, like filling a roster.
“While maybe having 11 players maybe, there were some guys we went out and recruited. Stopped them in the hallway and see if they wanted to play. Some didn’t even own a baseball glove,” added Adams.
He recruited players like basketball standout Tommy Pinegar, who joined the team two weeks into the season.
“I have not played since probably second or third grade. A lot of my friends were doing it, my little cousins are doing it. He’s a freshman and they needed some more players, and I was going to give it a try and I came to a practice, and it was really fun,” Pinegar said.
Tommy’s not the only one with little experience, forcing Adams to take a new approach to coaching.
“Every practice has become a baseball clinic. We got together and decided to just have a plan that’s not conventional with a lot of baseball coaching philosophies, and the first rule is we’re going to have fun,” said Adams.
The Blue Jays are having a lot of fun as they reached the five-win mark in their first three weeks.
“We’ve won a few games, we’ve surprised some people, we’ve been under their radar,” Adams said.
But this season isn’t defined by wins or losses, but rather by a group of kids coming together for the first time in school history.
“Just by having a team we’ve succeeded in a lot of ways by putting a team on the field,” the coach said.
Coach Adams added that the team doesn’t have any long-term goals, as they still don’t know how they match up against most teams around the area and in their class.
