Riding that sweet 'Bama Breeze'

The baseball program at Cullman High School in north-central Alabama has grown into one of the most prominent in the state in the years since former head coach Bryan Bowen led the Bearcats to the 2002 Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) Class 5A state championship. Last spring, 14 years after that first title, current head coach Brent Patterson and his senior-dominated gang of Bearcats capped a magical season by winning the AHSAA Class 6A state championship.

Because the program also won Class 5A state titles in 2007 and 2008 and finished as runner-up three other times under Bowen and was the 5A runner-up in 2014 under Patterson, Cullman was now not only relevant in Alabama but nationally, as well. It was as if the Bearcats had ridden that sweet “Bama Breeze” Jimmy Buffett once referred to in song right to the top.

The Cullman High School Bearcats landed in the No. 9 position in the final 2015 Perfect Game National High School Top 50 Rankings behind only No. 1 Parkview (Ga.), No. 2 Buford (Ga.) and No. 6 Oxford (Miss.) among schools in the PG HS Southeast Region (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee).

They debuted in the preseason 2016 PG National HS Top 50 Rankings at No. 29 nationally, behind only four schools from Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana and ahead of No. 32 rival Pelham (Ala.) among Southeast Region schools. After years spent battling traditional Class 5A Alabama powers like Hartselle and Spanish Fort for state supremacy, Cullman is now in Class 6A with schools like Pelham, Daphne and Hartselle; AHSAA Class 7A debuted in 2015 with the state’s largest enrollment schools.

It beat Pelham 2-to-1 in the Class 6A best-of-3 state championship series played in Montgomery last May, a year after losing to Spanish Fort 2-to-0 in the 2014 Class 5A best-of-3 state championship series, also played in Montgomery. It seemed like a natural progression, with each new season building skyward off the previous one.

“You do find a lot of carryover, but we’re dealing with high school kids so there’s always a lot of carryover with some expectancy, too” Patterson told PG this week. “You fight and fight and fight when you’re trying to build a program to get guys that are expecting to win and a community that expects a lot out of your program, but then there’s that balancing act because sometimes you expect to win just because you’re putting on that uniform.”

With the start of the 2016 regular season just days away, the biggest task Patterson and his staff are facing is getting the players right mentally while they also try to establish their own identity. It’s been a battle, Patterson admitted, getting some of the younger guys to realize they’re playing with a target on their backs and they need to understand that every night out they’re going to be getting the opposition’s best effort.

“If last year was extremely hard to do, this year’s going to be twice as hard,” he said. “A lot of it is going to be our mentality and the way that we show up and the way that we prepare, and I have to say that early on we’ve been a little bit lackluster.”

That feeling seems certain to pass because in separate telephone conversations with Perfect Game early this week, two of the current players indicated they completely understand the challenges ahead.

“Playing for a great program like Cullman is always fun and we have a hard work ethic,” senior Kolby Robinson said. “It’s been great getting down to state, and winning it last year was really fun. Definitely the hardest part, I’d say, is staying on top of things but our coaches do a good job of keeping us focused on the right track to try to get down to state again and win another championship this year.”

Standout junior Owen Lovell also seems very much on the same page: “We don’t want to go in there with a big head thinking it’s going to be easy because we lost seven seniors,” he said. “But we’re trying to use that momentum going into it, and everybody’s goal at the end of the year is being in the state championship (game); we hope that’s where we’re at again.”

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ROB KETCHAM, THE SPORTS EDITOR AT THE CULLMAN TIMES NEWESPAPER, seems to have a knack for numbers, or at least with letting numbers tell an important story. In a preview of Cullman High’s 2016 baseball season, Ketcham reported the 11 seniors that graduated last spring combined for 250 hits, 64 doubles, 19 home runs, 183 RBI and 159 runs on offense; the departing pitchers totaled 25 wins and 214 strikeouts in 216 innings pitched.

The biggest losses were Cole Collins (now at Wallace State CC) on offense and Jesse Scott (Auburn U.) on the mound. Collins slashed .464/.587/.843 with 19 doubles, 14 home runs, 63 RBI and 55 runs in 2015; Scott was 14-1 with a 1.05 ERA and 119 strikeouts in 93 innings pitched.

The Bearcats’ biggest strength during the 2015 championship season was their depth but with seven of those graduated seniors now playing college baseball – four at the D-I level and three at state junior colleges – that depth has taken a hit. That’s seven bodies that need to be replaced, but there were four others that played in at least 46 games a year ago.

“What we had last year was the ability to really move the pieces of the puzzle around a lot in order to keep guys healthy,” Patterson said. “When you had little (injuries) that happen during the course of a season, we were able to rest people and we didn’t lose a lot. This year, we don’t have that luxury. We’re very versatile but we’re not very deep.”

What this north-central Alabama fishing hole lacks in depth it makes up for with plenty of lunkers lurking up near the surface. The senior leader is shortstop Kolby Robinson, a 5-foot-10, 160-pound sparkplug who played briefly as an eighth-grader and has been fulltime varsity since his freshman season.

He’s a top-600 national prospect (No. 5 Alabama) who is the latest in a very long line of Cullman grads to sign with juco power Wallace State Community College (Hanceville, Ala.). As a junior last season, Robinson posted a slash line of .383/.427/.487 with eight doubles, two home runs, 25 RBI and 49 runs.

“We had a lot of great guys that contributed in different ways last year so trying to figure out who’s going to be in what role this year is definitely a challenge,” Robinson said. “I think we’re on the right track and everything’s looking good. We’re going to need to stay focused and do the little things right, and not worry about what people are saying and just keep playing our game.”

It is a salty and seasoned core of four top junior prospects that will ultimately determine just how far and how long this Cullman boat floats. It’s a group led by 6-foot-4, 225-pound outfielder/right-hander Owen Lovell, one of two U. of Alabama recruits on the roster.

Ranked the No. 147 national prospect in the class of 2017 (No. 5 Alabama), Lovell introduced himself loudly in 2014 when he slashed .424/.469/.858 with team-highs of 13 doubles, eight home runs and 34 RBI (he scored 25 runs) as a freshman. He roared back his sophomore season slashing .394/.512/.712 with nine doubles, three triples, 12 home runs, 61 RBI and 49 runs. Lovell was also 6-0 with a 1.66 ERA in seven pitching appearances last spring.

“When we went to state my freshman year, even though we didn’t win it that kind of opened my eyes a little bit and helped me mature a lot faster than most freshman would have,” he said. “After my freshman year, I looked back thinking that it was a good year … but that I’m going to try to double it and do better the next year. Now, looking back on my sophomore year, I’m going to try to make it even better (this) year and keep getting better as the years go by.”

Left-hander/outfielder Jacob Heatherly (No. 369, Alabama), right-hander/infielder Carter Bowen (t-500, Auburn) and infielder/right-hander Noah Fondren are the other top juniors. Bowen, the son of the former coach Byran Bowen, is a solid two-way threat after hitting .273 with 12 doubles, a home run and 31 RBI in 54 games and 176 at-bats while also finishing 4-1 with a 1.99 ERA on the hill (45 Ks, 38 2/3 IP) during his sophomore season.

Heatherly was 4-2 with a 2.22 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 56 2/3 innings; Fondren slashed .363/.460/.424 with 11 doubles, 18 RBI, 50 runs and 13 stolen bases in 54 games. It is a nice group to have coming back, and the players appear to have their feet planted firmly on the ground.

“We don’t really put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” Lovell said. “We all know we can go out there and feed off each other and just know that if we go out there and play the way we know how to play, everything will take care of itself.”

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THE CITY OF CULLMAN IS HOME TO ABOUT 15,000 SOUTHERN SOULS and lies about 50 miles north of Birmingham and 55 miles south of Huntsville right along the I-65 north-south corridor. Brent Patterson is a 1993 graduate of Cullman High School and while he was attending Athens (Ala.) State University he did his student teaching at Cullman HS and his first job out of college was at CHS – a Cullman kid, through-and-through.

Bowen was the head baseball when Patterson was hired for the 1998-99 school year and Patterson spent 10 seasons as his assistant coach before stepping into his shoes in 2009. During the 10 years Patterson was able to coach alongside one of his “very best friends in the world,” their Bearcats teams reached the state finals six times and won the three 5A state championships.

It was more than the winning, however, that Patterson took away from those 10 years. It was then he came to realize he could have an impact on these young kids’ lives through the game of baseball. He truly believed God had instilled in him a passion for the game when he himself was a young child and that by being around it every day as a coach he could share that with others.

“We’ve really, really strived to create a culture here that is about each other and we all share that common passion of the love for the game of baseball,” he said. “Through that we’re able to form relationships that we hope are going to last a longer than the four or five years (the players are) in our program.”

Patterson’s first varsity roster as head coach in 2009 featured seven seniors that went on to play collegiately. Twenty-three others followed in their footsteps over the next six years with most going to Alabama jucos like Snead State, Wallace State, Lawson State and Calhoun, but there are plenty of D-I’s on the list, too, with Alabama, Auburn and South Alabama leading the way.

And then there are the pros. Caleb Clay (class of 2006), Josh Rutledge (2007), Chase Mallard (2010) and Ben Moore (2011) are all playing professionally; Rutledge has four big-league seasons under his belt, including last year with the Boston Red Sox.

“We’re always trying to connect this generation of players with the generation of players that came before them that helped to build the program into what it is today,” Patterson said. “… And what I think is the most important thing is that all those guys are incredibly humble. If you met them and you were just sitting around talking to them, you would never know how great of a baseball player they were but you’d walk away and think those are some pretty special individuals.”

With so many of the high school players moving up and moving on, it’s impossible for the younger kids not to notice. Patterson speculated that this spring there are groups of third- and fourth-graders who are watching the current varsity players and who are longing to one day be in their shoes. They see the championships, they see the college scholarships and they see the professional contracts – it’s the stuff that dreams are made of.

“Even when you were little you always looked up to the Cullman baseball players, and you always dreamed about being on the team and winning state championships,” Robinson said. “It’s a great tradition that the town itself has built and it’s fun to be a part of it. The community is a big part of our success and they’re always motivating us and helping us out.”

Coach Patterson agreed with his senior leader on those thoughts: “Our community has bought into our program; our school has bought into our program,” he said. “Bryan was here for 10 years and his and our battle was more about building this vision that he had and building it was incredibly hard, and the task that I inherited was trying to keep it there, trying to maintain it.”

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IN THE 13 YEARS SINCE CULLMAN WON ITS FIRST AHSAA STATE CHAMPIONSHIP IN 2002, the Bearcats added 5A titles in ‘07 and ’08; Spanish Fort captured 5A crowns in ’10, ’11, ’12 and ’14; Hartselle won in 5A in ’09 and ’13; Pelham brought home 6A championships in ’04 and ’13, and Auburn won back-to-back 6A titles in 2009-10. They are the elite of the state’s big-school programs.

The Bearcats’ 2016 regular-season schedule includes a pair of double-headers with Hartselle in mid-April and a double-header with Pelham – a rematch of last year’s 6A state championship series – on March 1. They could also see Pelham before that at the season-opening Huntsville/Bham Challenge.

A home-field double-header with Smiths Station – last year’s Class 7A state champion – is scheduled for March 4 and Cullman will compete at the IMG Academy National Classic in Bradenton, Fla., March 21-24.

The Bearcats’ biggest rival is Hartselle, which lies about 25 miles north of Cullman on I-65 (Pelham is 70 miles south on I-65). Hartselle, with longtime head coach William Booth, won eight Class 5A state championships between 1990 and 2013.

“Coach Booth was probably the drive behind Bryan and I,” Patterson said. “When we were young we had basically grown up getting beat by Hartselle and we had an obsession with beating them. That was the fuel in our early days was to set the score right and get up there to where Hartselle was. And they continue; that’s just a program that never stops.”

Patterson wants his program to be the one that never stops, and the Bearcats could take a big step toward solidifying that notion by making a third straight trip to the AHSAA championship series this spring. The goal of the players is to win their rivalry games, post another 40-win season and ride that gentle “Bama Breeze” right back down to beautiful Riverwalk Stadium in Montgomery for the State Finals May 21-22.

“Our main focus is to repeat; we’ve always wanted to do that,” Lovell said. “But we’ve talked about it and we want to go into each game like it’s a bar fight and we’re fighting for the guy beside us and we just want to go into as hard and as fast as possible and play as hard as we can every game.”