Diamond Hurricanes Begin Summer Baseball

The month of June will be a time for learning and hopefully improvement in all phases of the game when it comes to the Monticello High School baseball team.

New head coach Brady McMichael has several games lined up for the Canes. The team fell last week 8-6 to Putnam County and will travel to Newton High School on Monday.

“The biggest thing for us is that we only lost one senior from this spring’s team,” McMichael said. “Everyone else is coming back so we are looking for everyone to step up and start winning more. We want to go out and compete.”

The 2018 season was one in which MHS was very close to qualifying for the postseason. The team lost several region games by a single run.

McMichael is looking to turn around those close setbacks in 2019.

Work on that improvement begins this summer as a solid nucleus of the team is competing. McMichael said some are involved with football work and others are on travel league baseball teams.

“We will have a good senior class next year and they should provide us with the leadership we need,” the coach said.

McMichael, a former Cane player who also competed at Toccoa Falls, said there will not be radical changes in terms of how how he directs the program.

“I had the pleasure of working with coach (Chris) Jenkins for three years,” he said. “I will still be calling on him for advice.”

With the new head coach not being far removed from his own days on the baseball diamond, McMichael hopes he will be able to connect with the current MHS roster.

“That should help,” he said. “One thing we are looking at is stressing team unity. We are planning a lock-in to help with that. I did that when I played in college and it helps with the closeness of the team.”

While Monticello hopes to record some victories this month on the playing field the main focus will be improving in all areas.

“This is a chance to get more at-bats, more pitching work and to try players at different positions defensively,” McMichael said. “Four our pitchers we will work on throwing more strikes.”