Scenic View from Vegas Arbor

With the start of the 2016 baseball season, the seniors at Arbor View High School in the desert oasis of Las Vegas, Nev., find themselves playing for their third head coach in four years. That’s a nearly annual transition that can be difficult to play through but these guys are bound and determined to make sure their final season of high school baseball doesn’t become an afterthought.

There is a core group of six senior prospects on the Arbor View roster this spring that were freshman in 2013 when the Aggies’ varsity went 32-6 under head coach Chris Martinez. Jay Guest was their head coach during their sophomore and junior seasons (2014-15), and the Aggies won 51 games during his two-year tenure.

Guest was let go amid an unusual controversy involving a storage shed he had built on school grounds last year, and school administrators decided to bring back Gary White to lead the program. The 2016 season will be White’s first as the Arbor View HS Aggies’ head coach since he helped launch the program back in the spring of 2006. Arbor View opened its doors in the fall of 2005 and White served as the Aggies’ first baseball coach from 2006-08. He now becomes the fifth baseball coach in eight years.

“It’s a solid program,” White told Perfect Game last week. “The programs here in Vegas now are getting so much better that the talent is pretty evenly spread. … The coaching is a lot better and I think there are at least 10 or 12 teams that could be the top team in town after 15 to 20 games.” Despite another coaching change, White expects Arbor View to be right there in the mix.

And that is where the Aggies’ seniors come in. It’s a group led by Perfect Game All-American shortstop Nick Quintana, a University of Arizona signee and the nation’s No. 18-rabked national prospect in the class of 2016; he is also considered an early round 2016 MLB draft prospect.

With all the changes the program has gone through since their freshman season, Quintana and his senior teammates are looking to provide a little stability this spring to make sure the Aggies don’t lose their position in the upper-echelon of Las Vegas’ stellar prep programs.

“We really like (Coach White). He certainly knows what he’s talking about and he knows how to coach the game, but as seniors this is our team,” Quintana told PG last week. “We do everything he tells us to do and we keep the energy up but at the end of the day this is our last season.”

Slugging first baseman Ryan McHale, right-handed pitcher/outfielder Parker McHale (fraternal twins who have both signed with Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn.), right-handers Brady Bordon and Shawn Martin and outfielder Jayce Gardner are among the other top seniors back for the Aggies.

“Since we have a new coach, all the seniors have just been trying to get everyone together and get the same family-like feeling that we had last year,” Ryan McHale told PG. “We want to bring that same feeling into this season so we can put it all together for one last ride. We have five or six of the same guys from last year that started and who are all seniors, so we should be pretty good.”

The Aggies have never won a Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA) state baseball championship but they’ve done enough nibbling at the edges to gain national attention. They’ll open the 2016 season on March 1 on the road at Eldorado High School ranked No. 50 in Perfect Game’s Preseason National High School Rankings.

That gives them the distinction of being one of five teams from the PG HS Southwest Region (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah) in the top 50. No. 16 Hamilton (Ariz.), No. 23 Bishop Gorman (Nev.), No. 37 Kellis (Ariz.) and No. 42 Desert Mountain (Ariz.) from the Southwest Region start the season ranked ahead of Arbor View. As close-knit as this group of seniors is and considering the success they’ve enjoyed in terms of winning games, it seems only fitting that some national recognition should come their way as they prepare for their final high school season.

“I’ve been around this same group of guys since I was in fifth for sixth grade, so to have one more high school year, it’s kind of crazy that it’s coming to an end,” Quintana said. “At the same time, it makes you think about the future and the past and what’s going to happen.

“Going into my senior year … I’m just going to try to live every day day-by-day and experience what’s going to happen my last year,” he said. “Once the season starts, I can’t wait. I think we’re going to be really good or at least just as good as we were last year; I have no worries whatsoever.”

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NO ONE CAN ACCUSE OF GARY WHITE OF NOT HAVING A LONG-TERM PLAN, at least not when it involves his job as head baseball coach at Arbor View High School in Las Vegas, Nev. The 60-year-old White might preach to his players the importance of taking a season one pitch at a time, one play at a time, one game at a time, but when it comes to his own career goals, he looking about 15 years into the future.

“I’m taking my orders from the principal but I plan on retiring from here in 2030,” he said. “I have a 2-year-old who is going to play baseball for me here at this school, and he’s going to graduate in 2030. Once he graduates, that’s when I’ll step down from coaching. It’s going to be a battle but I think I can get there.”

White is a local guy through-and-through, having played at UNLV for head coach Fred Dallimore for four seasons (1977-80) and then coaching at the university for 18 years. He played and coached in a Canadian independent league for seven years and spent another seven years coaching at the College of Idaho, an NAIA school that won a national championship while White was there in 1998. After leaving Arbor View in 2008, White spent four years on the staff at the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college in Las Vegas.

The baseball program at Arbor View gained a foothold as soon as the school opened its doors, qualifying for the NIAA state playoffs each of those first three years under White’s guidance. In the 12 years since Arbor View came to life, the enrollment has nearly doubled to almost 3,000 students and the baseball team has continued to occupy a prominent position on the school’s state-of-the-art campus.

“I always try to teach my players how to coach because you look at the game a little bit differently,” White said. “At the high school level you’ve got to get rid of those petty jealousies and you’ve got to be a good teammate. If I can get them to buy into what we’re doing, I think we’ll be OK. If they play hard, play smart, play with enthusiasm, I don’t think I’m going to have to be too upset during the season.”

While White is appreciative of the solid core-group of seniors he has returning this spring, he was quick to point out that he has very little experience returning on the mound. Senior right-handers Brady Bordon and Parker McHale were expected to be near the top of the rotation but both are hampered by nagging injuries and might not be ready to go right away.

“If I can get both of those guys healthy, that would be huge,” White said. “They’re coming along slowly, but this is high school baseball and I’m not going to throw them until they say ‘I’m ready.’”

The McHale brothers are both ranked as top-500 national prospects while Bordon, Gardner and Martin are in the top-600 range. Junior catcher Joe Fitzpugh, an Arizona commit like Quintana, is ranked No. 197 nationally and the No. 2 overall prospect in Nevada.

Ryan McHale, who hit 16 home runs last season, didn’t enroll at Arbor View until his junior year so this will be just his second season with the Aggies. He recalls being immediately impressed with the program he was about to become a part of, with team fund-raisers and a game-day atmosphere that gave every regular-season game feel like the playoffs. He and Parker aren’t identical twins – Ryan is listed at 6-foot-3, 215-pounds, Parker at 6-foot, 175 – but they share an identical affection for Arbor View baseball.

Even with the McHales and the other seniors back on board, all eyes will be on Quintana this spring. The 5-foot-11, 185-pound infielder is the younger brother of 2012 Arbor View grad Zach Quintana who the Milwaukee Brewers selected in the third round of the 2012 MLB June Amateur Draft and is now an Atlanta Braves farmhand. Nick seems destined to follow his older brother into pro ball.

“His work ethic and his desire to be the best is what sets him apart,” White said when asked his thoughts on Nick Quintana. “Obviously, having an older brother playing professional baseball helps, and he has his goals set and he’s doing everything he can to achieve them. He’s talented and he’s really looking forward to having a good year.”

White continued: “Every kid like that is going to feel a little bit of pressure but I think he handles it well as he goes about his game. He’s going to make mistakes and when he does he doesn’t get flustered. The other players see that and they realize that this game is all about failure and it’s how you respond to it and how you handle it. He does it in such a good way that it helps some of his other teammates.”

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THERE IS AT LEAST ONE OTHER WAY QUINTANA’S PRESENCE BENEFITS HIS TEAMMATES, and the Aggies’ opponents, as well. Whenever he walks out on the field there is almost certain to be a large contingent of MLB scouts in attendance, jotting down notes and taking names.

These Aggies seniors got their first real taste of playing in front of a host of MLB scouts last spring when right-hander Sam Pastrone was the main attraction. Pastrone had signed with UNLV but the Anaheim Angels changed his plans when they selected him in the 17^th round of the 2015 MLB June Amateur Draft and he spent last summer pitching in the Rookie-level Arizona League.

“Pretty much all of our seniors this year are comfortable playing in front of a bunch of scouts because there were at least 10 of them at every single one of games last year,” Ryan McHale said. “A lot of our guys feed off of it when a couple of scouts come out for our BP. No one really gets tense or anything; we just take it as fun, I guess.”

White expounded on that: “I try to explain to our players that the (MLB) scout’s job isn’t just to sign kids and that they have college contacts, too. When they came out to watch Nick play three or four times this fall, I told them this was their opportunity to show (the scouts) what they can do. They might have a contact they can get ahold of and tell them, ‘Hey, there’s a kid over at Arbor View who can really help your program.’ We’ve had some organizations come out just to watch our workouts and it’s a plus for our program. It’s a plus for Nick and it’s a plus for all the other guys.”

The top prospects playing for Arbor View’s opposition can also benefit from the exposure and there is no shortage of great players and great programs in the Las Vegas Valley. The elephant in the room every year is the program at Gorman Bishop High School, a private prep school of about 1,300 students that annually fields national championship-caliber teams from all of its athletics teams, most prominently baseball, football and boys’ and girls’ basketball.

The defending NIAA Division I state champion Gaels start this season at No. 23 in PG’s National High School Rankings after finishing No. 3 in 2015 and No. 2 in 2012. The program has won eight NIAA state championships, including seven straight from 2006-12, and beat Green Valley in last year’s NIAA Division I state championship game.

“Every year, the goal for most of the top teams is to beat Gorman and to knock them (out of the playoffs); for the last 10 years it’s been everybody’s goal to knock them off,” Ryan McHale said. “It’s just always fun to play against a bunch of talented guys.”

The Aggies had their chance to be that team twice in the last four years but lost an NIAA Class 4A Sunset Region championship game to the Gaels in 2012 and a pair of NIAA Division I Sunset Region championship games to them last spring.

In fact, Arbor View and Gorman met four times in the 2015 Division I postseason, with the Aggies losing two-of-three in the double-elimination Sunset Region playoffs before dropping a 12-2 decision to the Gaels in the winners’ bracket semifinal at the NIAA Division I State Tournament.

And Bishop Gorman isn’t alone among the titans. Basic, Bonanza, Centennial, Cimarron-Memorial and Las Vegas high schools join Arbor View and Gorman as Las Vegas-area programs that annually compete for NIAA Division I state championships.

“Gorman (has a good program) but I don’t look at them as a team that is going to completely just devastate you,” Quintana said. “Just because we’re playing Bishop Gorman doesn’t mean we’re going to lose, because here at Arbor View we’re all about that every single team, we’re going to beat them.

“That’s our mentality and really, just about every other team out here is just as good as us. We’re a good, solid baseball team – Gorman might be great – but in Vegas it seems like there’s always a team that beats Gorman, there’s always a team that beats us.”

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WITH 51 WINS THE LAST TWO SEASONS AND A COMBINED 65 IN 2012-13, there haven’t been too many teams that have found a way to beat the Arbor View Aggies over the past four seasons. Twenty-three alumni of those four graduating classes went on to play college baseball – most at Nevada junior colleges – and that doesn’t count Zach Quintana and Sam Pastrone, who had D-I scholarships in hand but chose to sign professionally.

Nick Quintana has had the opportunity to play baseball at the highest amateur level attainable and he’s played at big-league stadiums or MLB spring training parks everywhere from San Diego to Jupiter, Fla., and most points in between. After all those experiences, there’s nothing he enjoys more than playing in his own backyard. There’s just something to be said about a little home-cookin’.

“There is a lot of good talent out in Vegas and I don’t think people understand that,” he said. “Playing this whole summer (with the EvoShield Canes) was a great experience, meeting a bunch of new guys and playing against the best of the best, but when I come back to high school and I’m playing with all my buddies I don’t ever act like I’m above them; I don’t ever act like I’m better than them.”

Quintana might be the next really high draft pick to come out of Las Vegas, joining Bryce Harper (Las Vegas HS), the first overall pick in the first-round of the 2010 draft by the Washington Nationals; Kris Bryant (Bonanza HS), the second overall pick in the first-round of the 2013 MLB draft by the Chicago Cubs; and Joey Gallo (Bishop Gorman HS), the 39^th overall pick in the first-round of the 2012 MLB draft by the Texas Rangers. To go back a little further, there is always Hall of Fame right-hander Greg Maddux (Valley HS), a second-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in the 1984 draft.

Maddux remains a constant presence around his Las Vegas hometown especially now that his son Chase Maddux, a 2015 graduate of Bishop Gorman, is a freshman right-hander at UNLV this spring.

“They know the opportunity is there; they know the exposure is there,” White said of his current players coming of age in Las Vegas. “Harper comes back and he spends time at Las Vegas High School and works with the kids; Bryant comes back and does everything he can, not only for Bonanza but for other kids.”

In the here and now, the seniors at AVHS are locked-in on their final season of high school baseball. Nick Quintana and Ryan McHale spoke about making memories that will last a lifetime, playing in front of a throng of MLB scouts and just relaxing and having fun. Mostly, they talked about winning a state championship and making sure White enjoys it as much as they do. The old coach is ready for anything.

“This is a team I inherited … and I told them that I understand they might be having a hard time,” he said of the transition. “… They know I care about them and I know they respect me because of the way we operate our practices and everything. I’m enjoying it but I let them know that this is a high school experience and the game has got to be fun.

“You’ve got to enjoy it but you’ve got to be demanding on yourself,” he concluded. “I’m an old-school guy and Johnny Wooden never talked about winning, he talked about being prepared. I’m trying to prepare these guys for everything that will happen.”