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High School  | General | 2/5/2020

All-Americans Lead Westlake

Blake Dowson
Photo: Drew Bowser (Harvard-Westlake Athletics)

High School Preview Index | Pacific Top Teams, Tools

Harvard-Westlake is looking to get over the hump.

One of the more talent-rich schools in southern California (the school is located in Los Angeles), the Wolverines experienced a lot of success last year, finishing the season at 27-5-1, with 14 of those wins coming in league play.

Problem was, according to Head Coach Jared Halpert, they were one win away on multiple occasions.

“Last year unfortunately had a lot of second place [finishes],” he said. “We were runner-up at NHSI. We were runner-up in league, we didn’t win our league. And then we were runner-up in that final game of the year. It’s tough, and we’ll use it. We’ll see how we can get better. It’s a great experience regardless of what happened…But if we need a loss to motivate us, I’d say we’re doing something wrong in the beginning.”

A team on a mission to right some wrongs from a season ago, Harvard-Westlake has one of the most loaded rosters in the nation, and comes in at No. 9 in Perfect Game’s Preseason High School Top 50 Rankings.

The roster starts with a pair of PG All-Americans in Pete Crow-Armstrong and Drew Bowser. Crow-Armstrong, the No. 10 player in the 2020 class, is committed to play at Vanderbilt. Bowser, the No. 5 shortstop in the 2020 class, is committed to play at Stanford.

Bowser won the home run derby at the PG All-American Classic in San Diego last August, as well as the MVP honors at the game. He completed the trifecta by raising more money than any other play toward Rady Children’s Hospital. Crow-Armstrong is as complete a prospect as there is in the 2020 class.

Both players are first round talents, and both will be featured at the top of the Wolverine lineup.

“Four-year varsity starters, which is uncommon anywhere,” Halpert said of the pair. “They’re very different, but at the same time offer a leadership role on this team that’s very similar. They’re teachers. We have a five-man varsity coaching staff. With those two a part of our program, it’s more like a seven-man. They’re very hands-on. They care about the program, their teammates. They like to share and offer their experiences in games and in certain situations that maybe the other kids haven’t experienced. Beyond being two of the most talented athletes in the country, they’re very intuitive to what’s going on.”

Halpert actually experienced the PG All-American Game before his players did, as a coach in 2018, one year before Crow-Armstrong and Bowser made their mark on the game. It’s now a fun shared experience for the three of them.

The Wolverine head coach also said he and his two All-Americans know what comes along with playing in a game with that much prestige, however.

Being tagged as a PG All-American, along with all of the other preseason and draft buzz surrounding the two players, can become a loud and distracting noise. So the team instead chooses to lean into it.

Baseball is fun. Awards are cool. Let’s celebrate those things, Halpert said.

“It’s a blessing,” he said of the awards. “And it not coming just in their senior year, it has given them the opportunity to go through the trials of dealing with those things like added pressure and expectations that have to come when you are put on that stage. We try to not hide from it. We laugh about it…They miss getting a bunt down or something and they get a lot of flak for it. We definitely don’t shy away from their accomplishments, but they and their teammates really try to make light of the situation. Ignoring it, I think, would be a fatal mistake.”

Part of what makes it easy to laugh at is the fact that Crow-Armstrong and Bowser feel no sense of needing to put the Harvard-Westlake team on their backs.

The roster is much deeper than a center fielder and shortstop.

Sam Biller, a Cal Poly commit, will play right field for the Wolverines and hit toward the top of the order. Tyler Ganus will contribute in multiple ways, starting in left field and sliding in as the team’s third starting pitcher. Ganus is committed to play at Oregon and will be tasked with hitting between Crow-Armstrong and Bowser.

Jacob Galloway is one of the better backstops in the state of California as he enters his sophomore season for Halpert. Galloway caught the majority of the varsity games in 2019 as a freshman and hit over .400 in the process.

Jordan Kang is another sophomore on the team who will make a major impact. The No. 12 third baseman in the 2022 class, according to PG, will also be the team’s No. 2 starter on the mound.

Halpert expects Kang to drive in a lot of runs this spring.

“I can anticipate Pete and Drew’s on-base percentages being pretty high this year,” he said. “I can’t imagine a ton of fastballs being thrown to them. We’re definitely going to be looking at Jordan and a couple offensive players to be able to capitalize in those situations.”

The rest of the roster includes players like Jack Hassett, an NYU commit who will pitch out of the pen, Thomas McCaffrey, a UC Irvine commit who will play a utility role, and Christian Becerra, who will be the staff ace.

“He may be flying under the radar to the rest of the world, but certainly not to us,” Halpert said of Becerra. “He’s got a couple of extremely big wins under his belt for us…Christian is about as seasoned as they come. He’s been in a bunch of dog fights.”

Harvard-Westlake has the pieces it takes to be a top-10 team nationally in the high school rankings. The talent is obviously there. The coach has a winning pedigree, having won a College World Series with Fresno State in 2008. And the school has an impressive alumni base eager to give back to the kids currently going through the system.

Major League hurlers Lucas Giolito, Max Fried, and Jack Flaherty all graduated from Harvard-Westlake – Giolito and Fried and 2012 and Flaherty two years later in 2014. All three were first round picks. All three were also PG All-Americans.

Crow-Armstrong, Bowser, and the rest of the team have been using them as resources the entire time they have been at Harvard-Westlake, according to Halpert, who also coached the three MLB pitchers at the school.

“It’s the brotherhood,” Halpert said. “You could call it a bunch of different things. Jack’s out here grinding every day. Lucas and Max are out here as well, and make themselves extremely available to our players. The entire alumni community…we’ve had the opportunity of those guys bringing their teammates out to Harvard-Westlake for their workouts. They make themselves available, they’re all good guys, very humble, and they love baseball.”
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