Volunteer Baseball = embarrassing

[DandDD]

In the late 90's and early 2000's there was a couple of age groups of kids that participated in quite a bit of "travel ball" during the summer months. Not sure how much of that is going on now. When those kids came through the program in the 2002 to 2005 timeframe Volunteer had their best team. Even then two 18 win seasons were the best they could accomplish. And that was done in the AA old Watauga conference (although that conference was pretty stout at that time).

After that group went through it bottomed out. There has been some very capable coaches at Volunteer since that time but none of them had much to work with. Their current coach has his hands full.

[DandDD]

I've always felt the work ethic from the kids in the Volunteer area was lacking. a few willing to work at it. Most just wanting to have it give to them. One or two hard working kids don't make a ball team.

Until someone brings back a competitive type of ball in the off season and dedicates their time to working at it, and gets the parents bought in to it, there will be no improvement. These kids have to be prepared before they get to the High School program.

DB, Science Hill, Unicoi Co. South are traditionally strong teams in this area. Those coaches didn't make those programs great. What those kids did before they got there is what make them successful. The high School coaches just fine tune it. I'm sure some High School coaches do it better than others but it's not that much difference. That small difference between some of those coaches are what separates those teams come post season time. That's a whole other topic.