Mindball: How Elco baseball found its winning edge
The chatter of baseball is unmistakable.
But forget any mention of peanuts and Crackerjacks for a second.
Consider only the phrases heard time and again between the foul lines.
“Hey, time to find a hole out there now.”
“Attack the zone!”
“Two strikes here, gotta choke and poke!”
Familiar as they may ring, were these phrases ever barked outside of a diamond they would surely seem as out of place as Crackerjacks on a golf course. Yet here, of course, they’re perfectly normal; engendering no more second thoughts than does calling the umpire oft clothed in black by the name “Blue.”
Now when Elco’s Nate Hostetter strolled to the plate and toed the batter’s box clay on a regular Monday in May, the game’s usual chatter had long been floating around.
However during his at-bat, a unique shout shot over the infield, much like Hostetter’s ensuing RBI single to right.
“Have a moment, Nate!”
That cheer, authored by Raiders coach Chris Weidner, was no accident.
Nor were the chants that later flowed from inside the Raiders' dugout better suited for a tug of war.
“Time to pull the rope, boys! Pull the rope!”
For these calls are manifestations of the lessons responsible for the most successful Elco baseball season in a decade; lessons learned through a newly-acquired mental approach.
"They’ve meant to a lot to us,” senior ace pitcher Cole Blatt said. “That's really how we've come together these last few weeks as a team. We always take those things we learned, come out here and try to apply them every day."
Consequently, yesterday the program knocked off reigning district champion Hempfied, 6-5, in the opening round of the Lancaster-Lebanon League tournament for one of the season's greatest upsets. Next week, Weidner’s squad is ticketed for its first District 3 tournament appearance in six years.
Yes, Elco wins because it deposits fastballs into outfield gaps and attacks the zone. But focuses on collectively pulling a metaphoric rope to assist one another and individually relishing the moment have been equally critical, as demonstrated by the Raiders’ 4-1 mark in games decided by two runs or fewer since May 2.
“It’s helped tremendously,” assistant coach Mike Simmons said.
For when a club competes on the edge, as Elco and every other Section Three team did this spring, the proverbial little things simply do not exist. Every pitch and swing is a moment magnified.
And that Monday played out as no exception.
Hostetter’s single, on its face a run-of-the-mill base hit, was the game-winner in a critical 1-0 triumph over Lebanon.
* * *
Years ago, the sight of Jeff Swarr standing with the Raiders would’ve been akin to spotting a warring general cozy behind enemy lines.
But on this day, the former Lampeter-Strasburg and Solanco coach is simply their guest; or more precisely, their guest lecturer.
Speaking five days before the Lebanon win, Swarr, a long-time teacher at Lampeter-Strasburg High School and now additionally a performance enhancement coach, is expounding upon on teachings delivered earlier in the year.
The core of Swarr’s message to all athletic audiences hones in on the concept of maximal competition. Not in conflict with an opponent, rather in the spirit of the word’s Latin root meaning to seek together. Swarr pushes players to individually strive for the best version of themselves and for teams to collectively do the same, thus creating continual inward competition.
Having addressed Elco twice the year before and once in 2016, Swarr comes now with a trust-centric message packed inside an analogy designed to parallel difficult game situations.
Here’s the scenario: You find yourself hanging off a cliff, clinging only to a rope. Who would you want and who would you trust to be on the other end, holding your life in their hands?
Like any team-building exercise worth its time, this mental journey was purposed for a specific destination.
“When you can answer in a wholehearted, committed fashion that it doesn’t matter who’s there, as long as they’re a member of the team,” Swarr says, “that’s when you know you’ve turned the corner.”
Elco’s senior co-captain Kyle Rosengrant did him one better.
When his turn to answer arrived, Rosengrant blurted out: “Well, I’d want my whole team pulling the rope.”
Bingo.
And that’s exactly what the Raiders have done since; hold on in the heat of battle, particularly in close games or when one of their own slips and falls.
"We keep talking. We don't yell at each other for making stupid plays,” junior pitcher Tyler Price said. “We get mad at each other, but we come back in and talk to each other."
His coach sees it, too.
"A lot of it is being great teammates,” Weidner explained. “They constantly pick each other up."
There was no shortage of rope pulling during Elco’s final regular-season stretch, which featured six games in as many days and yet still produced a pair of postseason bids.
The Raiders overcame three errors in a close shave against Donegal, returned from a four-run deficit at Cocalico and battled through fatigue in the finale against Manheim Central to win and force a section playoff game.
Yet arguably the finest example arrived in that winner-take-all championship Saturday morning, which the Raiders ultimately lost.
Clay Hain, the club’s fourth starter in the rotation, faced a 2-0 deficit with a runner on first and one out in the bottom of the sixth. The young right-hander generated a perfect double-play ball to third base, the ball was collected and then rocketed into right-center field on an errant throw.
Eventually, the bases were loaded and Manheim Central threatened to secure its trophy one frame early.
"In previous years, I think if we get into those situations and it's tight, we shrink a little bit,” Weidner admitted.
There would be no shrinking.
Elco escaped unscathed, still within reach of a title.
They pulled the rope.
* * *
Back to the Lebanon game.
Hostetter’s hit drops in, the Raiders quickly record a third out and here come the Cedars, who want this game as desperately as their visitors from Myerstown.
Of course, that desire doesn’t translate quite as well, and victory later belongs to the blue and gold.
Outside of Hostetter, Elco now owes one more thank you to a teammate post-game for embodying the team’s mental approach: Price, whose masterful mound work fueled the shutout.
"I know what he can do when that slider's on, Weidner said that afternoon. "But what he did mentally today was huge."
Huge and not a far cry different from how Hostetter managed to plate the day’s only run.
Whether his previous pitch resulted in strike three or a towering, gut-wrenching fly ball, Price remained present. He attacked hitters one windup at a time. With each pitch, Price, like Hostetter, had himself a moment and then, finally, a win.
This mindfulness stems again from Swarr’s lessons, which encourage deep, unrelenting focus on the Raiders’ present performance. Inside the arena, all signs of the past are essentially immaterial; even those lingering on the scoreboard.
Competitors should relax, inhabit the moment and exert themselves to the fullest extent. This, in the modern age of analytics, is high school baseball’s winning edge.
“When you are in tight games, it’s the mental game that wins,” Swarr says. “It’s not the physical.”
Elco can now attest to that fact more than most, which has begun to draw some attention.
Tulpehocken’s Dave Voigt, one of the longest tenured varsity baseball coaches in central Pennsylvania and also Weidner’s former skipper, briefly reversed the mentor-mentee relationship before their annual clash April 30.
"He said ‘Give me the mental stuff!’” Weidner laughed. “He taught me so much and now he wants me to teach him. It's not rocket science, but it is about believing and trust, and I've really become a big believer in it.
“They're the things you take for granted sometimes, but you realize you have to go back to. It's a lot of trust, having a moment and grinding."
The culmination of these elements yields one more for the Raiders: enduring positivity.
When Elco errors rear their ugly heads, they do not take root. They instead wash away like a four-ball count belonging to the batter that just trotted to first.
After all, there’s another moment to inhabit.
And given that mistakes are as permanent a part of high school baseball as anxious parents and girlfriends in the bleachers, the Raiders do themselves a tremendous favor by refusing to become their own undoing. Opponents must truly defeat them.
In turn, it’s been more than a month since Elco lost two straight.
* * *
Swarr will be among the first to admit his mental lessons and team-building are far from a cure-all for any program.
They are as solid foundation as any, no question. But at some point when you’re down one run, someone needs to cross home plate. Baseball will always be a results-driven game.
And in truth, Elco’s results are a mixture of its training, selfless collection of upperclassmen, talent and experience. Yet when Blatt, perhaps the single Raider who best personifies that blend, was asked to explain his team’s season-long success, he pointed to only one cause.
"We've come together more,” Blatt said. “The past years we haven't been quite as close with each other, and this year I think that's really helped us win these games."
He’s right.
When you listen to the differences at an Elco game, you begin to see them, too.
Today, those differences have cemented the makings of a historic season none around the program will soon forget. Just forgive them if they won’t acknowledge it quite yet.
The Raiders are having their moment.