Youth serves at No. 4 Barbe

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IN THE 30 YEARS THAT GLENN CECCHINI HAS HELD HIS POSITION as head of the baseball program at Barbe High School, it has grown to be recognized as one of the most prominent in the country. Winning eight LHSAA state championships since 1998 – three in the last four years including back-to-back in 2014-15 – and a Perfect Game High School National Championship in 2014 does a lot to enhance a program’s reputation.

Cecchini has won with just about every sort of team imaginable over the years, and won a lot. Buccaneer teams have averaged over 30 wins per season and won 20 district championships during his tenure, and they’ve usually done it with a solid group of seniors leading the way.

Last season provides a great example. The Bucs finished 32-10 after beating Catholic High School-Baton Rouge (Catholic-B.R.) in the LHSAA Class 5A state championship game. Barbe graduated five position players who started nearly every game a year ago, and all hit between .426 and .350; right-hander Brant McNease was 10-3 with a 2.72 ERA.

Therein lies the challenge Cecchini faces with the 2016 Buccaneers. Left-handed starting pitcher Tyler Booth is the only senior on the roster who contributed at a high level in 2015, which means that every slot in the batting order, 1 through 9, and every other slot on the pitching staff will be filled by juniors and sophomores.

That much youth won’t go unnoticed by anyone. But it’s also a fact the history and tradition of the Barbe program is so strong that Cecchini could probably march a team of eighth-graders out there and it would still be expected to win. Outstanding underclass talent combined with overwhelming respect for the program as a whole is enough to land Barbe in the No. 4 spot in the 2016 Perfect Game High School Preseason National Top 50 Rankings.

“At our school, we’ve created a climate and culture where if you’re going to start or even play at Barbe, it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a senior or anything in between, we have confidence in you and we believe you’re ready to play,” Cecchini told PG. “… Even though we have a lot of juniors, these kids are very experienced.”

This group of Bucs may be young grade-wise but they are, indeed, quite seasoned on the field. At the conclusion of the LHSAA spring season, Cecchini and his staff put together two teams that each play about 25 games during the summer.

The coaches are also able to work with players who aren’t out for football in four-on-one drills during the fall, he said. Cecchini’s sons and Barbe alumni Garin and Gavin Cecchini – Garin is with the Boston Red Sox and Gavin is a top prospect in the N.Y. Mets organization – help with those drills once their professional seasons have ended.

Simply put, by the time these players are set to begin their junior seasons, they’ve already logged a lot of time on a baseball field, and this year’s group is no exception.

When looking at the top of the 2016 Bucs’ roster it’s only appropriate to start with Booth, the lone senior. A 5-foot-11, 175-pound lefty PG ranks as a top-500 national prospect and the No. 3 left-hander among Louisiana seniors, Booth pitched in 16 games as a junior and finished 8-2 with a 3.28 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 64 innings of work; he has signed with Southeastern Louisiana University.

After the examination of what Booth brings to the Barbe table, consideration of this incredibly talented junior class can begin. Despite what he brings, Booth won’t be the staff ace. That distinction belongs to junior Adam Goree, another 5-foot-11, 175-pound left-hander ranked as a top-500 national prospect and the No. 1 lefty in Louisiana’s class of 2017. He was 6-2 with a 2.57 ERA and 69 strikeouts in 64 innings as a sophomore. Junior Ty Thibodeaux has been moved to the closer’s role after going 3-0 with two complete games in 22 2/3 innings last season.

The top returning position players – all juniors – include first baseman/designated hitter Slate Fuller, shortstop Kirkland Banks, second baseman Peyton Doumite and centerfielder Tanner Littleton. Fuller slashed .336/.393/.600 with 14 doubles, five home runs, 35 RBI and 17 runs last season, while Kirkland was slashing .272/.380/.350 with five doubles, a home run, 16 RBI and 28 runs. Kirkland will bat leadoff this season with Fuller settling into the 3-hole.

“I still feel like some of these guys can step up right away but time will tell,” Cecchini said. “Are we going to be as good of a hitting team as last year? Maybe not quite as good but (history tells us) we’re going to hit over .300. I think we’ll hit, we’ll play defense, we’re going to run the bases and we can bunt, so we’re going to be able to manufacture runs.”

Cecchini touched on a variety of topics during a lengthy telephone conversation with PG last week, but every topic that was broached basically boiled down to what can best be described as Cecchini’s thoughts on the most efficient way to conduct business: It’s the “Barbe Way,” for lack of a better term.

He firmly believes baseball mirrors life, and the game needs to keep moving forward so it doesn’t fall behind in the race to use new technologies and techniques. Cecchini cringes at what he believes to be the outdated notion of, “This is how we’ve always done it, we’ve been doing it this way for 100 years and we’ve always been successful, so this is how we’re going to continue to do it.”

With each new season, he brings his team together and they set out goals in a way in which he calls “visualizing success.” Those goals almost always include winning state and national championships. Working on and developing the mental side of the game is also a season-long goal, and the elimination of all negative talk and body language is seen as a must.

And although Barbe is a public school, Cecchini unapologetically bases his lessons and messages in the Christian faith. It all comes down to holding onto firm beliefs about the right way of doing things and then putting that knowledge to work out on the field.

“Everything counts, everything matters,” Cecchini said. “We’re an everything team: We want to be the best at base-running, we want to be the best at bunting; we want to be the best at reading balls in the dirt and advancing bases. We want to be the best at throwing first-pitch strikes, we want to be the best defensive team; we want to have the most power. We want to dominate in every phase of the game because everyone knows you can win in a lot of different ways.”

The 2015 Buccaneers were 25-9 when they entered the Class 5A playoffs as the No. 5 seed, having lost four of their last nine games during the regular season. That record included a 10-5 mark in District 3, which includes fellow 5A powers Sulphur, Lafayette and Sam Houston; those schools went into the playoffs as the Nos. 1, 4 and 6 seeds respectively.

Barbe got past No. 28 Dutchtown handily in the first-round, and then topped No. 12 Live Oak 2-games-to-none in a best-of-3 in the second round. That paired the Bucs up with Lafayette in a best-of-3 quarterfinal matchup which Barbe won 2-to-1, bouncing back from a 15-13 loss in the second game.

Up next was a semifinal showdown with arch-rival Sulphur, a team Barbe had lost to twice during the regular season. This time the Bucs prevailed, 4-3, with its seniors providing all the fireworks. But it was Adam Goree who picked up the win in relief after the Bucs’ rallied from a 3-2 deficit in a game played in front of 7,000 fans, according to Cecchini.

“Goree did outstanding, he was pounding that fastball in (and) he’s been in the big games,” Cecchini told NOLA.com after the win. “(Sulphur is) a great team and they were No. 1 in the state for a reason. But don’t count the Bucs out, man, we believe in ourselves.”

The win sent Barbe into the championship game against No. 2 Catholic-B.R. and once again the seniors did most of the heavy-lifting in a 6-1 victory (although Fuller did contribute an RBI single in the top of the sixth that gave the Bucs a 4-1 lead). It marked the second time the program had won back-to-back state championships (they also won in 2000-01) and gives the Bucs another shot at an elusive three-peat. Cecchini likes their chances.

“We always say this: ‘We’re going to reload every year. We’re never rebuilding,’” he said. “Some years you’re going to be a little bit better than others where you’ll have different strengths in different areas, but we’ll always just reload.” This season, youth should serve the Bucs well.