On May 1, in their final regular season game, the Sidwell Friends Varsity Baseball Team beat The Saint James Catholic School 10-3, winning the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAC) regular season banner for the first time since 2008. Throughout the spring season, Sidwell went 14-6 in one of its most successful seasons in the past 20 years.
Head Coach Jon Mormino attributes the team’s success to three factors. The first and most apparent factor is the tremendous investment in time committed by many guys to improving their skills between October and February. Whether that be hitting or working on fielding reps, the improvements showed this year.
The second factor that Mormino mentioned was Strength Coach Chan Cho’s support of the team and the players taking advantage of the opportunities given. For instance, many of them took High-Performance Training in the winter. According to Mormino, Cho’s work with the players made the team stronger.
The third factor cited by Mormino was the supportive culture of the team and the lack of a hierarchy with equal contribution from everyone.
The team recorded 16 regular-season wins, its highest since 2011, when Sidwell won the DCSAA Tournament. This is a very encouraging development for the program, as up until the past few years, Sidwell Baseball has faced little success, recording just two winning seasons since 2011.
However, Mormino has worked to improve the program and the team has competed for a banner every year with the intention of becoming one of the best in the MAC.
Mormino mentions how even with this year’s success, this team isn’t much different from other teams in recent history: “They are very similar to last year’s team. This team is a step in the evolution of the program.”
“Last year’s team was very good and similar to the team this year. What allowed this team to be better is that it improved in the little things,” he added.
Andrew Wallace ‘05 noted that current players have far more advanced skills than former players. A key reason, he pointed out, was the culture of playing baseball year-round rather than only in the spring.
