Baseball Breakdown

Over the past 19 years, Reservoir baseball has never put up a losing season. The general consensus around Howard County is that this year’s team would be the one to jeopardize the record and a team to take advantage of. With the loss of last season and only three experienced varsity players, others are looking to sweep the leg of a weakened team. Reservoir must try to prove themselves worthy of another winning season.  

All this comes with stakes higher than the team’s debut season in 2003, and Reservoir has not only lost players, but games as well. In March, Howard County’s Board of Education made the decision to shorten the season from eighteen games to eleven in order to make up for time lost due to the Coronavirus pandemic. These circumstances not only give Reservoir fewer chances to win, but fewer days of rest as well, with some weeks hosting four games and only one practice.

This will obviously put a tremendous strain on the Gator pitching rotation and the infield, with seven of the eight players playing on the bump and in the dirt. This forces other players who may have never started in their career to step up and carry the weight of a possible loss on their mind when there are few games to win. 

One of these players is senior second baseman Thomas Cogdell who has only seen a few starts in his career at Reservoir and is now faced with the task of protecting the field as others protect the plate.  

“It doesn’t really bother me. I got these guys back, and they’ve got mine. Even though I haven’t played a lot of games for Reservoir, I still have a lot of games under my belt, and I am confident in my abilities, even if they aren’t seen as the best on the team.” Thomas said. 

Although Reservoir may seem handicapped by this season and its restrictions, they have done a lot to make up for it. The belief that the Gators are unprepared will be a costly one for teams who smile when they see the team on their schedule. 

“We aren’t underdogs” Head Coach Adam Leader tells his player “ We never have been. We are too good and work too hard to be anything less than a competitor every year, even though players might see us as injured and young coaches do not.” 

This hard work Coach Leader speaks of is Reservoir’s off-season work– and if you saw them you would believe that they were in mid-season form. Reservoirs off-season preparations are unlike any other team, with workouts at an outside facility twice a week, hitting and fielding practice once a week, a fall ball season that took them all the way from Blair field in Montgomery County to the shore of Bethany Beach, and the Sports at the beach tournament where they faced teams from New Jersey and Texas. 

All of the work the Gator baseball team put in is yet to pay off. When they step on the field, the choice is up to them whether they want to have a historic season or a horrendous one.  You can bear witness to the spectacle that will be this year’s win or loss by visiting the Gators on their home field or going to one of their away games listed on the schedule here: CountySports.Zone | Schedules: Reservoir High School – 2020-2021