It might be expected at places like American Heritage High School in Florida or Harvard-Westlake High School in California, but to have a half of dozen NCAA Division I recruits emerge from the same graduating class at a metropolitan high school in Arkansas just doesn’t happen every day.
But here they stand, these six seniors at Fayetteville High School, all with either signed letters of intent or verbal commitments to D-I schools, including hometown Arkansas (the U. of Arkansas is in Fayetteville), Mississippi, Southern Mississippi, Kansas State and Central Arkansas.
Four of the six D-I prospects are primary right-handed pitchers who combined for a 19-1 record last spring, a dizzying winning percentage that has to have long-time head coach Vance Arnold going to bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in his head a full five weeks before Christmas.
It’s a dedicated, hard-working group and several of the 2015 roster spots are filled with prospects that are going to realize their goal of playing at the next level.
“They’ve all be focused on this since seventh grade and in junior high school,” Arnold told PG in a recent telephone interview. “They’ve played together summer and winter and given up other sports to concentrate on baseball, and to help them achieve their goals is kind of special.
“They’ve sacrificed by giving up other sports and a lot of them are big hunters and stuff like that and they’ve put that on the back-burner to keep training and get better.”
In addition to the six D-I signees, another two or three of the Purple Bulldogs’ players are expected to sign with junior college programs in the coming weeks, bringing the number of college signees from FHS’s 2015 class to nine.
The group is led by 2014 Perfect Game National Showcase alumnus Andy Pagnozzi, a 6-foot, 195-pound right-hander ranked the state’s No. 2 overall prospect (No. 187 nationally) who has signed with Ole Miss. Pagnozzi went 11-0 with a 0.67 ERA as a junior, allowing 43 hits in 72 2/3 innings, striking out 97 and walking 13.
Pagnozzi has attended 18 Perfect Game events, was named to the Top Prospect List at both the PG National Showcase and the PG Picher/Catcher Indoor Showcase, and has been named to seven PG all-tournament teams, usually while playing for Marucci Elite.
He was named all-tournament at last month’s PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., while pitching for the Texas Scout Team Yankees, which advanced to the tournament’s quarterfinals.
Right-handers Walker Powell, Cody Davenport and John Boushelle are all top-500-type prospects and have committed to Southern Mississippi, Central Arkansas and Kansas State, respectively. Catcher Grant Koch and middle-infielder Drew Tyler – ranked in the top-500 nationally – are both Arkansas recruits.
Arnold is pleased with all of his college recruits but finds it especially satisfying when his players decide to stay at home and become Arkansas Razorbacks.
“A lot of them go over here to Arkansas to play and it’s a special feeling to be at an Arkansas game and hear three or four kids’ names that you’ve coached,” Arnold said. “It’s a big deal and you take pride in that, so they’ve got a big responsibility to our tradition and our culture here in our community.”
Powell, Davenport, Koch, Tyler and Boushelle have attended a combined 34 PG events; Davenport and Tyler joined Pagnozzi at the PG National Showcase and Davenport was also at the PG P/C Indoor Show.
Davenport, also a 6-foot, 195-pounder, hit .412 (24-for-97) with 14 doubles, five home runs, 24 RBI and 24 runs scored last spring while also going 4-1 with a 2.28 ERA with 30 strikeouts in 27 2/3 innings on the mound.
Fayetteville High School re-established its baseball program 27 years ago and Arnold is the only head coach the school has had in its most recent history. In its early years, the team played its games at a city park before moving on campus in 1992 and now enjoys a beautiful new field and indoor facilities.
The Bulldogs won the Arkansas Class 7A state championship in 2013 with a 24-1 record. It was the school’s sixth state championship since 2003, a run that included three straight state titles from 2007-09.
They won their ninth conference title since 2001 in 2014 (three others were won in 1988, 1989 and 1997) and advanced to the 2014 Class 7A state championship game where they lost a decidedly one-sided 10-0 decision to Bryant to finish the season at 30-4. Bryant wound up No. 44 in the final Perfect Game National High School Top-50 Rankings while Fayetteville landed at No. 48.
“We’re as close as can be,” Andy Pagnozzi said of this senior class. “Most of us went to the same elementary school, and we hang out together during school, outside of school, every place. We’re always together. It helps so much with communication, just knowing each other and how they are.”
Former University of Arkansas and St. Louis Cardinals catcher Tom Pagnozzi, Andy Pagnozzi’s father, got the ball rolling with this group of FHS seniors when they were sixth-graders, working with other parents to form a booster club and create a strong youth organization. The young players were able to use the FHS indoor facilities and weight room to train and stay on top of the players’ development.
“When they came to us they were already polished and really knew the game well, and we just concentrated on getting them bigger, faster, stronger and then taking them out to play the best competition in the country.” Arnold said.
Tom Pagnozzi was with the team at the PG Coach Bob Invitational in March, but downplayed his contributions when PG asked him about it at that time.
“There are seven of these guys that will be on the field today that are juniors and we started these guys out when they were nine years old,” he said. “I enjoy it, and it’s always more enjoyable working with better players. When they’re nine and you’re trying to teach them things, they’re just trying to learn their body. What I enjoy is when you say something you can see them trying to work on it; they understand it a lot more.
“They all know each other and they’re all really good friends. When you can get a little more chemistry I think that always helps from that standpoint.”
Arnold noted that when he started the program at FHS all of the youth teams would be wearing Arkansas red-and-white uniforms or the all-star teams would wear red, white and blue and the team names would run a long gambit.
Nowadays, just about every youth team from Fayetteville uses some variation of the Bulldogs nickname, such as “Dogs” or “Dawgs” and generally wears some variation of FHS’s purple-and-white color scheme when playing in out-of-town summer tournaments.
“They all want to come to Fayetteville High School and play baseball,” Arnold said. “It makes you feel great as coaches and teachers that there is so much pride in what you’re doing and the kids know what they’re getting into before they get here.”
This season’s senior class will be fortified by a new bunch of underclassmen eager to build on the FHS tradition and equally eager to improve upon that Arkansas Class 7A championship game performance of last season. They’ve kept their deer hunting shotguns on the shelf and are already hard at work in the weight room, anticipating even more college offers to arrive in the spring.
“The kids know that when they leave here and go into college baseball, physically they’re going to be able to handle the weight room and all the things that go with college athletics,” Arnold said. “Now the main thing is for them to be good citizens, be good kids; stay out of trouble. We have bumps on the tire every once in a while where somebody will do something stupid and we’ve got to deal with it.
“The main thing is we want them to be responsible people, be respectful and appreciate the opportunities they’re given here at Fayetteville High School and in our community.”