How tough is the district competition for the Little Cypress-Mauriceville Bears? Last season the Bears finished in a three-way tie for third place with West Orange-Stark and Hardin-Jefferson. Hardin-Jefferson won a play-in game with LC-M, and of course West Orange-Stark went all the way to the state championship game in Austin.
Bears’ Coach Steve Griffith has a number of players back from last year to battle for the playoffs this season. Griffith is counting on Drake Trawhon’s arm on the mound and his bat at the plate to help lead the Bears. Mitchel Lee will be at first base. Grant White returns to handle the catching chores for LC-M. Vinny Hale should be at second base and is a magician with the glove. Peyton Choate is coming off an injury, but he is back from last year’s squad. The coach concedes the Bears are not young anymore with this core group playing for him two years now.
LC-M has some underclassmen that will also play for Coach Griffith. Sophomore Michael Lee appears to have won the starting position at shortstop. Slade Green pitched three innings allowing one hit in a recent scrimmage and is doing well coming off a slow start from soreness. In leftfield is junior Seth Dronett who was primarily a pinch runner last year. Griffith concludes that other than those three, everyone on the field will be seniors for the Bears.
Griffith expects Trawhon and White to be leading hitters for LC-M and is hoping some of his other players will improve with their bats. Coach Griffith wants some of the guys hitting down in the .200s to get their batting average up in the .300s or even over .400 this year and make an impact. One player the coach is already seeing make an impact and contact with the bat on the ball is sophomore Truman Franklin. Griffith plans to use Franklin as his designated hitter batting him in the five or six hole of the lineup. Franklin has hit homeruns and multi-hit games in the scrimmages, and Griffith looks for him to do big things this year.
The coach believes he has his pitching ace lined up. Lefthander Drake Trawhon who has started district games the last two seasons is penciled in as the number one starter for the Bears. Griffith concedes a number of other pitchers will be fighting it out to make it to the top of that list.
The Bears and Coach Griffith’s goal this year is to make it back to the playoffs which they just missed last season. Griffith believes LC-M is about like it was last year going into the season. He sees the district being a dog fight between all the schools to get into the post season with five or six teams competing for the four playoff spots. Griffith says the Bears will just have to slug it out with everybody and see how things turn out.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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