BANGOR, Maine — With the sun beaming through the windows outside while they prepared for their first workout of the preseason in a hallway, members of the Bangor High School baseball team could be forgiven for longing for the days when snow is no longer an impediment to an afternoon on the diamond.
Like it or not, preseason workouts indoors are a prerequisite for postseason success.
“I think if we were able to go outside now, in some ways we would be lost,” said Bangor coach Dave Morris. “In the Northeast, no matter what level you’re at being able to confine yourself to a smaller space and teach fundamentals and work on drills specific to those fundamentals helps you build a solid foundation.
“The game itself for us is still a couple of weeks away. Right now we’re just trying to build some arm strength, some stamina and work on those fundamentals.”
That’s a fundamental description of baseball life throughout most of Maine each March, and for the Bangor Rams that early work in the hallway or nearby Red Barry Gymnasium has led to some remarkable results in recent times.
Bangor High School began the first day of full-team preseason workouts Monday as the four-time defending Class A state champion, with players from those teams also going on to win three American Legion state titles in the last four years.
The Rams are 71-9 over the last four high school seasons, while the Bangor Coffee News Comrades are 86-32 during the last four summers of Legion play.
And in state championship contests, the two teams are a combined 7-1 over that span, including 2-0 last summer in sweeping both the high school and Legion crowns.
“Any time you can take an experience and use it in a positive way I think you’re ahead,” said Morris, who coaches both teams. “Right now we have some younger kids who are learning a lot and then we have some older kids who are building off what they learned last year. We’re not talking about playing a baseball game right now, we’re just trying to get ourselves to be able to pitch fundamentally, catch fundamentally and hit fundamentally.”
If anything, this spring’s high school team might be ahead of schedule after its relatively youthful returning nucleus led by junior pitchers Zach Cowperthwaite and Noah Missbrenner and also including Zach Ireland, Tyler Parke, Zach Murray, Karl Sund and Colby Smith, capitalized on an opportunity for increased playing time last summer when several seniors on the 2017 high school team opted not to play Legion baseball.
Many of those younger contributors to the high school team’s title run became sudden leaders on a Legion team that went 20-8 and emerged as the best of the state’s Legion baseball programs.
“Those kids did a great job for us last summer,” said Morris, “and they also really got indoctrinated in the sense that they were going to be in a leadership role and have more responsibility not just with playing a position but in how this team functions.
“That’s the great thing about play summer baseball, it gives you a jumpstart on the upcoming season in high school. They work hand in hand.”
That leaves this year’s high school team — which is scheduled to open its season at Lewiston on April 17 and play its first home game against Brunswick two days later — much more experienced than it might have been before passing last summer’s advanced-placement Legion baseball class.
“When you think in those terms this group has some experience and some youth at the same time,” said Morris. “It’s a good mixture, and hopefully the kids that are back can share the wealth with the kids that are coming up so when there are times when things are tough they can say ‘Let’s stay on task, let’s work hard,” and then when they see success they’ll realize that we’re not going to rest on those laurels. We’re going to make our own mark.”
The 2017-18 Rams hope that mark includes becoming the first high school baseball team in Maine to capture five consecutive state championships, though plenty of potential pitfalls — particularly motivated opponents — could rise to threaten that ambition.
But that wasn’t of primary concern to Morris and his staff on this sun-splashed afternoon spent far removed from a baseball field.
“Right now we’re in March, and we’ll let June take care of itself because If you let your eyesight get too far ahead you lose the opportunity to get better today,” Morris said. “Simple concept, tough to follow, but these kids have bought into it and understand that they have to work hard every day.
“Every year is a different year but if we can just take it one day at a time and work hard, we’re confident good things will happen for us.”
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