J.L. Mann High School and Academy in Greenville, S.C., has fielded a varsity baseball team for right around 50 years now, and the history books aren’t exactly teaming with examples of stellar seasons or record-breaking performances. Year after year, a handful of graduating seniors would hang up their uniforms and pack away their gloves and spikes without leaving behind any hardware in the school’s trophy cases.

A crack in the wall standing in the way of a South Carolina High School League (SCHSL) Class AAAA championship of any kind opened up last season and the Patriots climbed right through. The SCJSL divides its state tournaments in half – an Upper State and a Lower State – with the Upper and Lower champions meeting in a best-of-3 series to crown an overall state champion. In 2015, the Patriots captured the first Upper State championship in school history, and did it with a roster heavy on juniors.

Highly regarded senior outfielder Chris Thompson was one of about a half-dozen juniors who played prominent roles on the 2015 team that finished a 26-6 record. During a telephone conversation this week, he told PG he grew up playing on a regular basis with nine of the 12 primary varsity players from a year ago and they’ve always played well together. He acknowledged their relative youth, but that didn’t seem to slow the group down.

“It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had for baseball,” he said. “We’re such a great group of guys, we always get along together, we work really hard to push each other every day. It got us really far last year; we just came up a little short in the end.”

There it is in black and white, the happy ending that wasn’t quite so happy after all: “We just came up a little short in the end.” After out-scoring three opponents by a combined 27-9 to win the District IV championship and whacking Greenville, T.L. Hanna and Northwestern high schools by a combined 20-8 to win the Upper State title, they dropped two straight to Wando HS in the State Championship Series to miss out on the ultimate prize.

“A lot of us had been playing together since we were 8 or 9 years old so we knew we were going to have a good team,” senior catcher/first baseman Blake Brady told PG this week. “If we would have played like we knew (we were capable of) in those last two games we definitely would have had a good shot at winning it all.

“We had a good season last year and we’re happy to where we built up to get as far as J.L. Mann has ever been and it was kind of a nice little breakout point for our school,” he said. “It was definitely a special and monumental point for our baseball team and we could have finished it out with a bang.”

Brian Simpson is starting his 10^th year as the head of the J.L. Mann HS program, after starting his career with a three-year stint as head coach at Carolina High School and Academy in Greenville and serving a couple of years as an assistant coach at NCAA D-II USC-Spartanburg (S.C.). It is Simpson’s job to make sure those little things that come up in every baseball game that’s ever been played don’t derail the train so the Patriots don’t come up “a little short in the end” this season.

Perfect Game High School prognosticators think they have things figured out. J.L. Mann came in at No. 21 in the PG HS Preseason National Top 50 Rankings, the only school in the PG HS Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia) to be included in the initial rankings.

Even though J.L. Mann High School is located in an area of the country long known for traditionally strong prep baseball programs, the one at JLMHS has never asserted itself. The school opened in 1965 and when Simpson took over 10 years ago there was very little interest in the program among the top athletes walking the hall.

“It’s been a building process over the years; each year it seems like we’ve gotten a little bit better and a little bit better,” he said. “It was one of those things where we had to change the culture and get guys to just buy into how we do things and really believe that if you show up every day and work hard, good things will happen; it’s kind of snowballed into where we are now.”

In its preseason Class AAAA Rankings published online on Feb. 1, the South Carolina Baseball Coaches Assocation has J.L. Mann perched in the No. 1 position, just ahead of No. 2 Summerville and No. 3 Carolina Forest. Defending champion Wando is ranked No. 7.

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THE GREENVILLE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT (GCSD) IS THE LARGEST IN SOUTH CAROLINA with 100 total schools, and J.L. Mann is one of 14 high schools in the sprawling district. Mauldin, Riverside and Wade Hampton high schools from the GCSD join Mann in the eight-team SCHSL Class AAAA Region II, which also includes Boiling Springs, the winner of the overall Class AAAA state championship in 2008. Just this century, Mauldin won overall AAAA state titles in 2000 and 2004; Riverside captured Class AAA championships as recently as 1999, 2003, ’04 and ’06.

The J.L. Mann Patriots want to be a part of that elite fraternity and if they get there this season they’ll do in on the backs of five senior prospects PG ranks in the top-500 nationally in the class of 2016. Simpson recognized that this collection might be a special group back when they were freshmen and playing in a fall league alongside the J.L. Mann varsity and junior varsity teams.

The players were mixed and matched together but the young guys got a lot of playing time and gained some valuable experience. They were over-matched at times but the coaches could see the drive and the talent they possessed while also knowing they still had a lot of room to grow.

“The majority of this group has either started or contributed since the ninth-grade so they’ve had a lot of experience over the years,” Simpson said.

The five top seniors returning are all position players and four have signed to play collegiately next season: the catcher/first baseman Brady (Liberty), the outfielder Thompson (Presbyterian), shortstop Patrick Frick (Wake Forest); third baseman Joe Satterfield (Elon). Catcher Bryce Leasure is uncommitted but is interested in several top D-I programs

Satterfield slashed .337/.442/.558 with team-highs of three home runs, 23 RBI and 24 runs scored. Brady boasted a slash-line of .360/.441/.505 with team-highs of 32 hits and 10 doubles; Frick slashed .322/.411/.388 with six doubles, 18 RBI and 23 runs; Leasure’s OPS also exceeded 1.000 with a slash line of .400/.570/.480 and he had six doubles, 18 RBI and 19 runs.

Thompson did not hit well (.174) but managed to both drive in and score 12 runs, and was among the team leaders with seven stolen bases. Junior first baseman Blake Jeter, a South Carolina commit ranked No. 381 nationally, should fit nicely in the lineup alongside the group of seniors.

“Almost all of us seniors now have played (varsity) since we were freshman and the momentum we’ve gotten from last year and just how well we all played together and how much fun we had, it’s really carried over into this year,” Thompson said. “I thought it would be a little tense the first couple of weeks of practice but it’s been really laid-back. We’ve all been playing really well in all of scrimmages and having a lot fun, and whenever we have fun we’ll just absolutely destroy whoever we play.”

Added Brady: “We’ve kind of grown up competing as one and know each other’s personalities and when it’s time to pump somebody up or get somebody’s head on straight and back into the game. I’m happy to be a part of this and as a group we’ve done some big things; we’re going to try to keep that going.”

The Patriots did graduate three prominent players from last year’s team, including left-hander Hank Nichols, now at the University of South Carolina; the others were right-hander Tyler Vaughan (Anderson University) and outfielder Jonah Witt (Erskine College). They will also be without senior lefty Mitchell Mikes, a Coastal Carolina recruit who compiled a 2.48 ERA and struck-out 72 in 62 innings of work as a junior; he is lost for the year to a torn ACL.

“Going into this year our biggest question mark is our experience on the mound,” Simpson said. “We have a lot of juniors we’re hoping can step up and if they give us some quality innings we should be pretty competitive again. So far they have pitched pretty well in our scrimmages so it’s looking promising. For us to get where we want to be, our pitchers are going to have to give us an opportunity, and that comes down to throwing a whole lot of strikes and letting us play defense.”

The top returning pitcher is junior left-hander Jack Stamler, a Clemson commit ranked in the top-500 nationally who pitched 37 2/3 innings and compiled a 1.30 ERA in a team-high 19 appearances as a sophomore. Unheralded junior right-handers Wilson Cannon (6-foot-5, 190-pounds) and Christian Hynemann will be called upon to contribute from the mound, as well. It’s worth noting that Leasure and Stamler (along with Mikes and Nichols) were named to the 2015 Class AAAA All-State Team by the South Carolina Baseball Coaches Association.

“I really think it’s going to come down to how fast our pitchers mature and develop as the season goes on,” Simpson said. “I think we’re going to be very good offensively and I think we’re going to be very good defensively just with the majority of the guys that are coming back. They have tons of experience and they played at a high level over the summer and in the fall.”

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MANY OF THE TOP TRAVEL BASEBALL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE COUNTRY CALL the PG Mid-Atlantic Region home, and the nationally prominent Diamond Devils, Upstate Mavericks and SC Shockwave are based in South Carolina (along with about a dozen other programs). The players that fill the spots on the J.L. Mann roster readily take advantage of these summertime opportunities and most of the top guys can list at least a dozen PG tournaments on their resumes.

“At every Perfect Game tournament I’ve ever been to since I turned 15 (years old) I’ve face at least one or two arms that are throwing 90 (mph) or harder,” said Thompson, who for the past three years played with the Mavericks organization. “The talent is always so much better than high school. High school is fun but all of are always pushed to our limits playing during the summer at the Perfect Game events just because there’s so much talent there.”

Satterfield and Mikes have also played with the Upstate Mavericks, and Frick and Cannon are among those have played with the Diamond Devils. Others like Brady, Jeter and Stamler have hooked up with the Virginia-based EvoShield Canes; all the players do so with the blessing of their head coach.

“I know a lot of the high schools in South Carolina, they like to try to keep their guys together but I’m a firm believer that if they hear the same voice long enough they start tuning you out,” Simpson said. “It’s good for them to get outside of that voice they hear every day for three months and just get a different perspective and see how other coaches do things and how they demand certain things from them.

“When they come back they can give me feedback and we can try different things, and it also gives them a new perspective and they see that I might not be as bad as they think I am,” he added with a chuckle.

The players’ travel ball experiences during the summer and fall prepares them nicely for what they’ll see the following spring during their high school season. Highly ranked Perfect Game All-American shortstop and South Carolina signee Grant Bodison and senior right-hander Rasesh Pandya (Wofford) are both at Mauldin. Shortstop/right-hander and South Carolina recruit Mason Streater is at Boiling Springs, and these are the guys the J.L. Mann players saw frequently over the summer.

Former Patriot standouts also took advantage of the summer circuit, including outfielders Wes Rogers from the class of 2012 and David Donald from the class of 2010.

The Boston Red Sox selected Rogers in the 28^th round of the 2012 MLB Amateur Draft right out of J.L. Mann, but he opted to attend Spartanburg Methodist College and became a fourth-round pick of the Colorado Rockies in 2014; he is now a Rockies’ farmhand. Donald was a 50^th-round pick of the Houston Astros in 2010 and went on to play at Tallahassee CC, Spartanburg Methodist and Tennessee Wesleyan College.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have some really good players come through since I’ve been here,” Simpson said. “We’re starting to get those kids that are athletic and also those guys who play baseball competitively the year-around, and that also helps.”

The idea now that the start of the 2016 season is approaching is to put all that experience and year-around exposure to good use.

“If we continue to work hard we should be right where we were last year,” Blake said. “Going into this season we thought our pitching was going to drop off a little bit but we’ve had some younger guys who have stepped-up in the scrimmages and look projectable. If we continue to work hard in practice and do the things that we need to do and make the routine plays we should be right back where we were.”

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IT COULD BE SAID THE J.L. MANN BASEBALL PROGRAM’S RISE TO THE TOP RUNG OF THE SCHSL Class AAAA ladder began with a Region II championship in Simpson’s fifth season, or just before this group of seniors reached high school. The climb has been steady over the last four years.

“it’s definitely something special to be a part of and I’m really enjoying it,” Brady said. “It’s just been a great atmosphere and great environment to be around, and to be around great coaching. It’s definitely something special to see the program turning toward the good.”

Added Thompson: “With my class, we just started getting bigger and bigger and started developing physically with our baseball skills. This senior year so far has almost been a breeze for some of us because we’ve done it for so long.”

The season won’t remain a breeze for long, not once the first pitch is thrown in the team’s first regular-season game. Thompson called last year’s ride to the State Championship Series against Wando “amazing” but admitted he and his teammates walked off the field – their home field – for the final time last May 20 with a decidedly bad taste in their mouth. Brady said the team will be playing with a little bit of a chip on its collective shoulder because, well, they “came up a little short in the end” last season.

“We still feel like we have a bunch of people overlooking us … and it’s one of those things where we’re out to prove something,” he said. “Not just prove that we’re good in our area but prove that we’re the best in the state. Our purpose is to win a state championship and nothing else; that’s our main goal. We want to finish this year with a bang and show everybody that we are the best team in the state.”

Their 10^th-year head coach is not backing away from such talk. He’s watched these guys – this group of seniors, particularly – from a front-row seat since their freshman seasons and he feels like he knows what’s inside them pretty well.

“Their mindset is to win a state championship or nothing,” Simpson said. “That’s their goal, and they got a taste of it last year but coming up short was a little disappointing for them. They’ve worked extremely hard to try to get back this year and win it because they don’t want to have that same feeling they had last year by not winning. I really think that if we don’t win the whole thing this year it’s going to be a huge disappointment for them.”