Baseball officially begins in full force Feb. 14 at Cecil Patterson Field when the Greyhounds host Jeff Davis and Wayne County. A step toward that has been crossed off the list during Jones County’s preseason at Cecil Patterson Field.
Three days of tryouts wrapped up last week as the JCHS coaching staff finalized its roster. But the work hardly began in the last week or so for Jones County. In fact, the Greyhounds have been working out with one another all the way back to the fall. That helped pave the road for being able to officially practice recently.
“We’ve had guys who have been throwing and doing things like that since October, so it was not a big thing to adjust to,” Greyhounds head coach Noble Coley said. “It’s not like we only had a week to warm up. There are always places where you can throw, and they have really taken advantage.”
Although things like a starting lineup and pitching rotation will be more cemented between now and the middle of February, other traits of this year’s group are already evident, Coley says.
“It’s still early. “We don’t really have conversations at this point about where somebody is at,” Coley said. “That comes a week or two down the road.”
What is already appearing to show for the Greyhounds? Intangible for a team that finished third in the region a season ago.
“A lot of our older guys, and even some sophomores, they have taken control, saying, ‘We can we do this, we can go up to the field.’ That’s what we want (as coaches), them being able to do things without a coach being on top of them,” Coley said. “They really like each other and enjoy being around each other. They pour into each other in the weight room. We had two weeks of conditioning competitions, and we actually had a tie and had to settle it with a tug-of-war. The future is bright; we just have to keep that mentality.”
