Three Gavilan baseball players earn all-conference honors in
winningest season in three years
Gilroy – Go ahead and call it a hump year.
After two years of slowly building under head coach Neal Andrade, the Gavilan Rams baseball team started to make a statement this season.
“For the most part, it was just getting over the hump of just being able to compete,” said Andrade, in summation of his team’s season. “This year’s team was like, ‘Let’s just forget about competing. Let’s win games.'”
That attitude was evident in the team’s record, which was an improvement over the previous two seasons. Two seasons ago, the Rams won five games. Last year, they won 10. The Rams finished out 2006 14-25 overall and 8-17 in the Coast Conference South, one of the toughest leagues in California junior college baseball.
“We’re kind of going in the right direction,” Andrade said.
Despite a slow start to the season that was hampered by rainy weather, the Rams earned some key wins. The team took two out of three games from San Jose City College and Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) as well as a couple tight games from eventual third-place finisher Ohlone College. The Rams finished second-to-last ahead of MPC in the seven-team South Conference.
“We had a chance to win many more games this year,” Andrade said. “There was at least five or six games looking back that could have gone either way.”
The Rams had three players named to the all-conference second team: Freshman outfielder Efrain Ruiz, freshman catcher and San Benito alum Seth Hudson and sophomore pitcher Jeff Harter.
Ruiz’s batting average of .310 was best on the team. The freshman also led the squad in RBI’s (31), hits (49) and doubles (14). Ruiz wasn’t supposed to play in the outfield this season, but injuries prompted Andrade to move him out of the infield.
“He didn’t work with the outfielders at all in the fall,” Andrade said. “He did a very serviceable job.”
In his first season at Gavilan, catcher Hudson started in all but one game. He was tied for second on the team in hits (38) and doubles (11).
Sophomore Harter, a Santa Teresa High product, had the most starts on the mound with 13 games. The righty went 3-5 on the season and amounted 50 strikeouts in 93.1 innings pitched. His ERA was 4.44. Andrade said Harter will likely sign soon with a four-year program. Cal State-Stanislaus is one of the schools most interested in the sophomore.
Andrade – whose position as head coach will change from part-time to full-time once the Gavilan Board of Trustees approves it at this month’s meeting – is looking to strengthen next year’s roster with some local talent.
“All the seniors from Gilroy (High) are looking…Live Oak didn’t have that big of a senior class, but I’m hoping for (infielder) Brenden Flaherty,” Andrade said. “And San Benito has another four or five seniors.”
The coach added, “(The players coming from the local high school programs) are the key for us, which are all pretty competitive, to look at Gav as an option.”
Andrade believes becoming a full-time coach and physical education teacher at the college will only help him establish Gavilan better locally.
“It only allows me to do my job better, being on campus more and being seen more and involved,” Andrade said. “There’s a definite correlation between having a full-time coach and success.”
Ana Patejdl is the sports editor of the Gilroy Dispatch. She can be reached at 842-1694 or by e-mail at
ap******@gi************.com
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