Legion’s baseball program gets national TV exposure for senior night event

Senior week turned into an unforgettable experience for nine baseball players and their coach at Legion Collegiate School.

The nine senior members of the Lancers’ baseball team and their coach, Hamilton Bennett, got national TV treatment twice last week, as the networks picked up on the team’s touching senior night event earlier in the month.

As part of the Lancers’ May 5 senior night event, each of the nine seniors batted against his father, then ran the bases while family members read a letter about what the high school senior meant to them.

Senior Will Bartnikowski, who was interviewed Friday by ABC “Good Morning America” host Sam Champion, said he “broke up” as he rounded second base and listened to his mother read her note about him.

Earlier in the week, NBC’s “Today Show” did a segment about the Lancers’ emotional send-off of the seniors.

And all of this happened after a season that was already emotional enough — Legion Collegiate’s first campaign after the death of its beloved coach, Jalen Benjamin, last August. Benjamin, 29, was killed in an Aug. 10 crash on Interstate 10 near Columbia.

Benjamin’s family has filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against the company that owns the truck that struck Benjamin’s vehicle.

Bennett was hired in September to coach the school’s baseball program, and he organized the Senior Night event.

Bennett, who played baseball at Fort Mill High and later in the New York Mets’ minor league organization, told NBC that he used to walk the bases with his father at the end of every season.

He said Fort Mill High, where he coached in 2023, honored seniors in a similar way.

“I brought the idea from Fort Mill High,” he told ABC’s Champion.

The Legion Collegiate event got publicity because WSOC-TV reporter Hannah Goetz, who has a cousin on the team, filmed what happened. Her clip has gotten more than 2 million views on TikTok.

Jackson Gordon, a senior outfielder, said he batted against his father, Scott, and then ran the bases while his mother, Carrie, read the letter the parents had written about their son.

“It was never about where you ended up,” the letter read. “It was about who you became, getting to this point.”

Gordon told the Today show that the letter brought back “memories, memories, memories ... the happy, the sad, and everything in between.”

Bartnikowski, who told ABC that he was scheduled to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at Legion Collegiate’s commencement activities Friday evening, said the at-bat against his father was probably his last in organized baseball. He said he is scheduled to enter the U.S. Marines this summer.

“It was really cool that my dad was the one to throw out the last pitch, because (as I) grew up, he was the one throwing to me,” Bartnikowski told ABC.

The Lancers went on to win that Senior Night game 11-1 over the Pro Stock Royals and compiled a 16-9 record during the 2024 season.

Senior members of the team were Bartnikowski, Anthony Cipriano, D.J. Douglas, Aedyn Ellis, Gordon, Andres Lopez, Gavin MacDonald, Gavin Oakes, and Camden Towell.