The Steinbrenner High School baseball team had a great season, winning many games and establishing themselves as a force in their district.
But really, that’s not news.
They’ve done that every year since the school opened in 2009.
(Courtesy of Evan Abramson)
What is news is how the high school team — which loses players every year to graduation and turns over its entire roster every few seasons — continues to operate at a high level of success.
All signs for that achievement point to head coach John Crumbley.
He’s been a constant presence since the Warriors began playing baseball.
But Crumbley isn’t taking the credit for the team’s consistent success.
“We’ve got good kids at our school, and we have coaches who feel we have a formula that works,” Crumbley said.
Still, what has worked at Steinbrenner the past six years also worked at Jesuit High School, where Crumbley coached baseball for 22 years and was athletic director for three years.
The coach’s resume at Jesuit includes 11 trips to the state final four, two runner-up finishes and three championships.
Now, with two district titles in six years, Crumbley wants the Warriors to experience the same kind of success as Jesuit’s team achieved.
“I kind of want these kids to feel that experience of what I’ve been fortunate enough to succeed at in my career,” he said.
At first, it didn’t look like this season would be like the others.
The team struggled when the year began.
The Warriors lost their first two games and were still struggling a quarter of the way through their campaign. But they righted the ship, at one point winning 10 out of 11 games in a row. In one three-game span during that run, they outscored their opponents 56-2.
But most of their games were closer, and Steinbrenner came out on top most of the time with good defense and pitching. They held their opponent to one run or less 15 times, and went 13-2 in those games.
Unfortunately, one of those two low-scoring losses came in the regional semifinals, when Durant High School beat the Warriors 1-0 in extra innings. Steinbrenner finished the year with a 19-7 record, a Class 7A-8 district title and matched the school’s farthest journey into the playoffs to date.
Crumbley credits the team with sticking with the game plan, even when the wins weren’t coming early on, and following the path to success they’ve built at Steinbrenner.
“The kids and teams that buy into our system, our philosophies and our techniques — those teams are able to do a little better,” he said.
According to senior pitcher Ryan Fatzinger, part of those philosophies and techniques involve limiting mistakes and finding ways to manufacture runs.
“We’ve had a lot of success with discipline at the plate. We don’t strike out much, and we minimize the errors on defense,” Fatzinger said.
Knowing that he has a strong defense behind him gives him confidence on the mound, since the pressure isn’t solely on him to perform.
Fatzinger will carry the confidence he gained at Steinbrenner to Pasco-Hernando State College, where he’ll be part of the Conquistadors’ potent baseball program.
He feels prepared to join a successful college program after being a part of a successful program at Steinbrenner, which he attributes in part to Crumbley’s straightforward attitude with his players.
The coach’s successes — at Jesuit and now at Steinbrenner — are widely known, and motivate his players to not let him down, Fatzinger said.
“People don’t want to lose, especially with him as the coach,” he said.
The Warriors haven’t done much losing with Crumbley at the helm, regardless of who’s on the field in any particular year.
Next season will definitely include some new faces: Steinbrenner will lose 10 seniors, although not all of them were starters.
There were effective pitchers, like Fatzinger, that they’ll have to replace, but Crumbley is confident his developmental team has the players necessary to provide a roster that will enable Steinbrenner to continue its pursuit of excellence.
For now, Crumbley can reflect on the year, appreciate the team’s accomplishments and recognize this year’s performance as a successful continuation of Steinbrenner baseball’s already-strong pedigree.
“Winning the district title is huge,” Crumbley said. “and being that we’re six years old, and we’ve got two of them already, that’s pretty quick for a lot of places.”
Published May 20, 2015
