John Carlock Quotations

We were blessed to have some young kids hungry for baseball. We're already excited about next year. We played well. We put forth the necessary effort.

He (King) comes in in short spots because he can throw strikes.

We seem to be getting good defense and good pitching. We just have to work on the hitting. We gotta get stronger. But you start six freshmen and three sophomores, you're going to get that.

They are all baseball oriented. You can tell they have played baseball awhile. Now when you step here and are playing 11th and 12th graders you're going to (have some losses). They seem to accept it, but they also know every game they play they should be in the game.

Striking out has not been that much of a problem. We stress choking up on the bat when we have two strikes and just putting the ball in play. But we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we let two fastballs go by for strikes and then we are in a hole. That is a problem we've had with some of our guys.

You're playing a varsity schedule, so even though you might be freshmen and sophomores you've got to act like a varsity.

The biggest thing I am trying to get across to these kids is knowing what pitches you want to hit. We want them to hit their pitch, like fastballs instead of curves. They are just learning to recognize which pitches are in their favor and which favor the pitcher. I believe all of that will come with maturity and experience.

The best thing I can have is him playing there for four years. That's a key position for your defense. He's a smart kid and by the time he's a senior, he'll be great.

Not knowing what he'd be like - because I've only worked with these kids about a month - it's good to see that. When we get in those situations down the road in district games we want to be able to say, 'OK, what pitches can we throw.' He's doing it all for us.

I like our attitude. We have guys that are very hungry for baseball and they are great kids to work with. They want to learn and are willing to do whatever it takes. Right now, our strengths are our pitching and defense. We need to work on our hitting.

The errors we made were uncharacteristic of us. What if this, what if that. We needed some key hits here and there, and we didn't get them.