Catawba Ridge baseball, softball eager to repeat last year’s success

It’s a sunny yet cool Tuesday afternoon.

Catawba Ridge’s baseball team is practicing in a variety of ways, stretching out on the field or taking practice swings in “The Barn.”

On the outfield wall is head coach Stas Swerdzewski with a few helpers, a handful of zip ties and a large banner that reads “2023 State Champs.”

It’s an accomplishment that the head coach looks upon fondly. Heading into his fifth year at the helm, he wants it all over again.

And that doesn’t start with the first pitch of the season or the first day of practice.

“It starts with leadership,” Swerdzewski said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that were leaders on last year’s team that don’t allow complacency. There’s an old saying that on bad teams, nobody leads; on good teams, coaches lead; and on great teams, players lead. We’re very lucky here to have a lot of players that just won’t stand for complacency.”

Swerdzewski said it makes his job easier as a head coach to have so many great leaders on a team that achieved the pinnacle of team success.

Catawba Ridge finished last season 29-7, dropping the first game against North Myrtle Beach in the state championship series before winning the final two to hoist the trophy.

Swerdzewski isn’t one of those coaches who preaches forgetting what happened the previous season. He believes that retaining that memory is important for his team to replicate and surpass the amount of work it took to deliver that success.

“These guys know what it takes now,” Swerdzewski said. “We already know what the recipe for success is, and we just got to continue doing the things that we did to achieve our goal last year. Obviously, you don’t want to be complacent, but I think it gives us a little bit of an advantage to know exactly the type of work we have to put in and the types of practices we have to have in order to be state champions.”

Catawba Ridge is looking to rely on a healthy mix of younger players and veterans in order to secure the repeat.

Swerdzewski said sophomore North Carolina commit Caden Glauber is moving from being the team’s closer last season to a starting role this year, while outfielder Ethan Solnick is expected to take another leap as well.

Senior College of Charleston commit and pitcher/utility player Jackson Mullen said that winning last year’s championship has given him and the rest of the team a taste for more.

“We’re ready for the competition,” Mullen said. “I know we have a chip on our shoulder from winning the state championship, but I know we’ll be ready for any moment that comes our way.”

Catawba Ridge’s softball team is feeling much the same way, if not more emboldened.

The team was swept by North Augusta in the state championship round two years ago.

Last season, the team swept through the playoffs, including a sweep of North Augusta in the upper state championship round and swept South Florence in the championship round. The team didn’t drop a single game all season to a 4A team.

However, for head coach Michael Kidd, none of that matters.

“Preparing for this upcoming year, we’ve worked out, practiced just like we haven’t won it before,” he said. “Like this is going to be our first time. We definitely have moved on from last year and looking forward to going into this year. We’re good there.”

The team returned five All-Region players including Clemson commit and junior Sarah Rocheleau, the reigning Region and Class 4A player of the year.

Rocheleau, who is entering her third year on the varsity team, said the experiences she’s had each of the past two years are valuable to learn from.

Of course she wants to win another state championship this year, but for that to happen, it’s going to take a concerted effort from everyone on the team.

“Just staying strong together as a team and just ignoring all of the distractions and all the teams that are coming for us,” Rocheleau said. “We just need to stay strong together and work through all of it together.”

A big boost for this year’s team was its offseason workouts, as the team was able to lift weights both during the summer and in-season.

Kidd said he expects every girl on his team to be physically stronger and better conditioned than they were last year. And that will go to match the mental fortitude he feels every player on his team has.

“The experience of winning it last year, it battle-tested us for the environments that we’ll see deep in the playoffs and in that state championship. These girls have ice in their veins when it comes to that because they’ve been there. I think being there is going to be our biggest attribute heading into this season. Even though we were there the year before that, we just didn’t win, we used that experience from that year to catapult us into the win last year, and I expect for us to do even more this year.”

Kidd said that he’s also looking forward to USC Upstate commit Chloe Burger making a huge leap this year. Burger pitched hurt during the tail end of the season.

This story was originally published February 16, 2024 at 12:00 AM.