National High School Top 50 | NHSI Day 2 Notes | NHSI Day 1 Notes
When the Calvary Christian Academy Eagles boarded a plane on Tuesday to make their way to the USA Baseball National High School Invitational (NHSI) in Cary, N.C., they did so as the No. 1 team in the Perfect Game High School Top 50 National Rankings.
The Eagles debuted at No. 20 in the PG HS Preseason Top 50, but a 13-1 start – which included a 5-1 victory over preseason No. 1 American Heritage on Feb. 16 – grabbed everyone’s attention and they soon found themselves rising all the way to the top.
The invitation to the NHSI came months earlier, of course, and CCA’s fast start and ascension up the national rankings only served to legitimize the invite to the prestigious 16-team event.
“We’re excited; I think it’s a pretty cool honor to get invited,” CCA head coach Alan Kunkel told PG over the phone a couple of hours before he and his players climbed on board that N.C.-bound plane. “We’ll be able to test ourselves on a national stage … and it’s a different kind of pressure when you’re playing teams from all over the country.”
This was the first time Kunkel had taken one of his teams to the NHSI, but it is not the first time he has led a team out onto a prominent national stage. CCA’s third-year head coach and renowned secondary science instructor –he holds Doctor and Master of Education degrees from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix – is also a successful summer travel ball coach who has won championships on PG’s biggest travel ball tournament platforms.
There are people that are of the mind that high school baseball and travel team baseball can often work against one another. Kunkel is not of that mind, however, believing instead that high school coaches and travel ball coaches – even if that person is one in the same – are all working for the good of the teenagers they’re teaching and mentoring.
“I think it all translates well,” he said. “In a lot of ways, what I think we’re all trying to figure out is a way to remove the entitlement from our culture. It’s harder sometimes to generate and build chemistry during a travel ball season when you’re getting kids for six or eight weeks at a time, and then they’re going their separate ways depending on where they live.
“But at the end of the day, I think we’re all trying to do this for the right reasons … and we’re trying to help raise young men.”
Kunkel spent seven seasons as the head coach at Orangewood Christian School in Maitland, Fla., before arriving at Calvary Christian Academy – which is in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – in 2016. He was successful at OCS, winning 134 games during that seven-year stretch and leading the Rams to the FSHAA Class 2A semifinals in 2010 and a 2A state runner-up finish in 2011.
He wasted little time establishing himself once he got settled-in at CCA. His first Eagles team finished 21-9 after beating Fort Myers Bishop Verot in the FHSAA Class 4A state championship game. They finished 23-8 in 2017 after enduring a one-run loss to Pensacola Catholic in the 4A state semifinals.
The 2016 campaign was an “interesting” one, to use Kunkel’s word. CCA had graduated 11 seniors in 2015 and only two players – senior outfielder Tommy Orr and sophomore right-hander Christian Scott – returned that had any significant varsity experience from the previous season.
But a handful of potentially impactful players had transferred in, including senior catcher and 2015 Perfect Game All-American Max Guzman, and Kunkel decided to start building the program and creating a winning culture from the ground-floor up.
The first thing he did was get rid of the traditional, albeit short, fall season and instead required his players to get into the weight room five days a week; if they had to take a Friday off for a travel ball tournament, they were excused from the weight room.
He received a little bit of push-back from some of the older players that had been the program for a year or two, but he told them simply that this was part of the culture he was going to create. He needed everyone on the same page and it wasn’t long before they were on board.
“The way I look at it, why do I need to play another 20 or 30 games in the fall with my high school team,” Kunkel said. “We’re in a culture where we’re going to play travel ball and I want what’s best for the kids. I would love to say, hey, I’ll put together a Calvary travel ball team but that’s not what’s best for the kids.”
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IN RECENT YEARS, ALAN KUNKEL HAS ALIGNED HIMSELF WITH TWO OF THE MOST prominent and most respected Florida-based travel team organizations in the country: Elite Squad Baseball with president/general manager/manager Richie Palmer and FTB (Florida Travel Ball) with founder/owner/general manager George Gonzalez. Kunkel will be with FTB for a second straight year this summer and fall.
Nine current CCA Eagles have signed with/committed to NCAA Division I schools (three other seniors have signed with smaller colleges). Seven of the nine D-I’s play their summer ball with Elite Squad and the other two with FTB.
“We’re led by some really, really important pieces,” Kunkel said, mentioning Scott in particular, an alumnus of the PG National Showcase who has grown into a 6-foot-4, 190-pound force from the mound, and one now armed with a mid-90s fastball.
The seven that play for the Elite Squad are the right-hander Scott (ranked No. 124 ’18, Florida signee), senior third baseman/right-hander Roberto Pena (No. 143, Florida), junior infielder Mykanthony Valdez (No. 67 ’19, Miami commit), junior outfielder Tyler “TK” Knierim (No. 248, Duke), junior outfielder Ryan Keenan (top-500, Duke), junior right-hander Skylar Gonzalez (top-500, West Virginia) and freshman right-hander first baseman Andrew Painter (No. 133 ’21, Florida).
Senior middle-infielder Raynel Delgado (No. 63, Florida International) and junior catcher Ben Rozenblum (No. 183, Florida International) are the two FTB guys. Delgado was a member of the FTB/SF Giants Scout Team that Kunkel coached to the championship game at the celebrated PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., last October, a game FTB/SF lost to the Canes Prospects, 8-7 in nine innings.
Rozenblum will be back on the field with FTB this summer and, of course, can look forward to playing with his CCA Eagles teammates for one more spring season in 2019. Kunkel has nothing but praise for his junior backstop.
“Ben just really makes us go,” his coach said. “The young man leads off and handles an SEC (caliber) pitching staff with four (D-I) commits. He makes us go at the top of the order; plays with great energy. You’re going to get pedal-to-the-metal every day with him, and when he plays that hard it’s hard for anybody to take a play off; there’s great leadership in that.”
Kunkel has great respect for Palmer and his Elite Squad organization, and while he would welcome with open arms any of his CCA guys who want to join him at FTB, he leaves that decision up to them. He believes a young prospect can benefit by hearing the same points he emphasizes coming out of another coach’s mouth. The hope is the player will realize that if he’s hearing the same thing from multiple sources, it becomes even more set-in stone.
There is also an understanding within the CCA program that not all players move their game forward at the same rate; it’s a roster filled with kids at all levels of development. The top prospects like Delgado, Scott, Pena, Valdez, Rozenblum and the others should be playing with the Elite Squad’s or FTB’s top teams. Some of the others need to be playing with summer ball teams where they’re allowed to get reps, play every day and continue to get better.
Kunkel feels like he and his staff have done a “tremendous” job of creating an environment within the CCA program that rejects passivity and demands accountability, elements of the game he thinks can transfer seamlessly into the travel team culture, as well.
The only two forms of discipline he has ever used, he insists, are the bench and the lineup card. It isn’t necessary to waste anybody’s time with frivolous disciplinary actions – his players have been taught to hold themselves accountable.
“When you’re not putting pressure on yourself to perform, when on a day-to-day basis you’re trying to do whatever is required for the team to win and for the team to be successful, that reduces stress and allows for a team culture to be created where nobody has to be a hero,” Kunkel said. “They just go out and play the game with great energy, they play the game hard, they play the game the right way.”
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THERE IS ANOTHER PLAYER ON THE CCA ROSTER WHO ISN’T NATIONALLY ranked or committed to a college at this time but is already contributing in a more behind-the-scenes manner. That would be the up-and-comer Dante Girardi, a sophomore middle-infielder who has introduced his dad, former MLB All-Star catcher and World Series winning manager Joe Girardi, to the program.
“(Joe Girardi) coming in and speaking with our kids frequently obviously has been a tremendous asset,” Kunkel said. “It’s also a tremendous support system for myself in terms of reiterating some of the things we’re trying to talk about.”
Todd Hollandsworth, who spent parts of 12 seasons in the big leagues (1995-2006) and is now a broadcaster for the Miami Marlins, has his freshman son Ty enrolled at the school, and although Ty isn’t on the varsity roster this year, his dad also spends a lot of time around the team and the program.
“These are guys with big-league experience that come out here and hang out with the kids and can tell them what it’s like to be a big-leaguer and the struggles that they’ll endure,” Kunkel added. “They can explain to them how challenging it’s going to be on the college level, too, so when the kids leave here I feel like they’re going to be well-prepared.”
For the underclass players on the Calvary Christian roster, that means making sure they’re well-prepared for the remainder of this high school season, the important summer and fall travel ball seasons that lie ahead and right on into the 2019 spring high school season.
The differences between high school ball and travel ball persist, of course, and Kunkel is expert at using those differences as part of the overall preparation process. He views a typical high school season in the same light as a typical college season where there’s more practice time and fewer games each week.
A typical summer season for the more elite travel ball teams, on the other hand, will more closely resemble that of minor league baseball, with games every day for weeks at a time. In fact, it can be argued that a travel team schedule is even more grueling with teams sometimes playing three games a day, especially if there are weather issues.
“In a high school season, you’re capable of breaking down games, you’re capable of breaking down approaches, you’re capable of teaching the game,” Kunkel said. “But I also think that in a travel ball scenario, if you’re doing it the right way and your heart’s in the right place, you can teach the game during games; you just have to talk baseball.
“You just have to create a culture in that clubhouse, in that locker room or in that dugout where for two hours during that game, we’re going to talk baseball,” he repeated with feeling. “Whatever else is going on, remove it and we’re just going to talk baseball.”
No. 1 Calvary Christian Academy opened play at the NHSI on Wednesday with a 4-1 victory over No. 8 Hattiesburg (Miss.) behind a complete-game, nine-strikeout, three-hitter from Scott. The Eagles then moved in Friday’s final-four with an 8-2 victory over Sandra Day O’Connor (Ariz.) on Thursday.
Whatever happens the rest of the weekend in Cary, N.C., aside, the Calvary Christian Eagles will return to Florida next week and continue to work toward reaching their third straight FHSAA Class 4A state tournament final-four and winning their second Class 4A state championship in three years.
Kunkel is confident he has the right kind of players on his roster – kids with the right attitude and a strong mindset – to get that done. There the same kind of kid he will look to have on his travel team roster this summer.
“Their character allows them to reduce any anxiety and reduce any tension because they’ve worked hard,” he said. “They’ve worked hard during their high school season, they’ve worked hard during their travel ball season and the results are going to be the byproduct of their preparation, and that plays out in their character – doing things the right way because it’s the right way to do it.”