By no means would Neal Andrade like to go through another season like the one his Gavilan baseball team recently finished, but the manager learned all he needs to know about his players going into next year.
"When the chips are down you can really see true character," Andrade said.
Finishing with a 5-34 record and 27 straight losses, the Rams suffered from a lack of experience, some tough breaks in games early in the schedule and an erosion of confidence as the season progressed.
"From a coaching perspective, you try being the hard ass, you try being consoling, you try taking a break - you try a little bit of everything," Andrade said. "Ultimately, it's a team game and when the team fails, everyone fails."
Andrade pointed to a March 5 loss at Canada College, in which Gavilan held a late 1-0 lead before falling 4-1, as the season in a nutshell.
"Obviously, we didn't have a good year to say the least, but it was a really young team and we lost some pretty close games early in conference," Andrade said. "It kind of spiraled down from there."
Adding to the difficulty, Andrade said, was playing in the second strongest conference in Northern California: The Coast Conference South Division. Three teams qualified for the regional playoffs, with conference champ Ohlone capturing the tournament's No. 1 seed.
"That can be tough, when you play in one of the best baseball conferences in the state," Andrade said.
Despite the record, Gavilan's manager believes the Rams have a core of players it can build around with a good summer of recruiting.
"We have some young talented kids who have some potential," Andrade said.
Included in that list is middle infielder Stephen Smith, catcher Max Myers, and pitchers Matt Gattis, Kevin Sullivan and Miles Sanchez.
Andrade also included sophomores Tyler Osborne and Kevin Medeiros as two players who kept their heads up and continued to compete when things were going downhill.
"It's a great measuring tool for everyone to see who was still there at the end when things weren't going good," Andrade said. "It was tough to go through, but at the same time, it's about not only finding athletic ability but those intangibles, that character and work ethic.
"It's going to be a difficult task to recruit when you have difficult years like this, but it can go the other way really easy."
Josh Koehn Josh Koehn is a sports writer for South Valley Newspapers. He can be reached at: jkoehn@svnewspapers.com.
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