Jayson Larson
The Athens Review
ATHENS — Before the season, Athens Head Coach Tony Sikes knew he had a team with a little more power than last season.
But this, well, he couldn’t have seen this coming.
In 2009, the Hornets as a team hit nine home runs. Through 10 games this season, they have already matched last season’s team total. Matt Jordan’s opposite field blast in Saturday’s 11-3 win over the Eustace Bulldogs was the team’s ninth home run.
Jordan owns five of those nine after hitting three all of last season.
“We’re just looking for a pitch to hit,” said Jordan, a senior catcher. “It’s kind of come out of nowhere.”
Jordan used this past weekend’s 2010 Hornet Varsity Baseball Tournament to more than double hit total, hitting one in each of the tournament’s three games.
Morgan Sellers is second on the team with two long balls, and Luke Solomon and Sean Curley have one each. Solomon had two homers last season.
“We’ve got seven kids in our lineup at all times that could very easily hit one out of the yard,” Sikes said. “There’s some good and some bad about that. Sometimes we see someone hit one, then others end up trying to duplicate it.”
Home runs, indeed, can be a tricky thing. Sikes knows he must guard against his players lowering their baseball IQ by swinging for the fences rather than hitting ropes into the gaps.
“What I really like is we’re back to hitting the ball the way we want, using the whole field. We hit five balls into the gap (in the second tournament game against Eustace, on Friday). Earlier in the year, we were trying to pull everything.”
Equally as impressive is that the Hornets have reached last season’s mark without dingers yet from two more of their top hitters — Jack Barkley, who had two a year ago — and from Hunter Choate, who had one on his way to becoming the district’s Most Valuable Player.
