The majority of the 2022 baseball season, Shady Spring sat inside the top five teams in Class AA.
Unfortunately for the Tigers, the teams in front of them included top-ranked Independence who they would have to meet in sectional play and Bluefield.
The Beavers also spent a good portion of the year ranked in front of Shady Spring and the was the most likely foe for the Tigers if they made the regional round.
To the shock of many around the Mountain State, Shady Spring knocked of the highly touted Patriots before dispatching Bluefield in a wild regional series.
The magical run for Shady ended in the state tournament semifinals with a loss to eventual champion Logan, but now the Tigers are looking to reload and come out firing in 2023.
“It was an awesome season and it was great for the community. Nobody expected us to be in the state tournament, but we knew all season that we had a chance,” Shady Spring head coach Jordan Meadows said. “We just had to make it happen. The seniors went out with a bang and it gave the underclassmen an itch to come back and work hard.”
After spending the 2022 campaign chasing the teams ahead of them, next season will likely bring a role reversal for the Tigers who return a solid nucleus.
Tyler Mackey who collected three hits in the state tournament game against Logan and was named to the All-Tournament team will be back for his junior season.
Shady’s top hurler, Cam Manns will be back after a strong junior season.
Those two will be joined by Adam Richmond, Colten Tate and Tyler Reed who are back for their senior season after gaining valuable postseason experience as juniors.
Shady’s table setter Jacob Meadows came on strong as a sophomore and should be an even bigger threat at the top of the line-up next year.
For Meadows, the situation the Tigers find themselves in is a flashback to his first season as head coach at alma mater.
“That was the same situation I was put into in 2020. We were the 2019 region champions and we had a lot of players returning. We had the target on our back before Covid hit,” Meadows recalled. “On paper we look like the team to beat next year, but anything can happen. We saw that this year. We just have to do all we can to make it happen and get back to Charleston next year.”
Although Shady has a strong group returning, the Tigers will still need some solid contributions from some new varsity faces to get back to the state tournament.
“We have some (rising) sophomores like Aiden Calvert and Aden Seabolt’s brother Brody (Seabolt) that dressed a little bit of varsity. Jalon Bailey is a thee-sport athlete,” Meadows said. “They are all athletes and we are hoping they can grow in the off-season, get a little weightlifting in and make an impact for us next year.”
Shady Spring approaches offseason work during the current three-week period allowed by the WVSSAC a little differently than maybe some schools.
“A lot of underclassmen are playing Babe Ruth baseball and several upperclassmen are playing travel ball with a team out of North Carolina. We have a mixture of both and mostly everybody is playing baseball somewhere,” Meadows said. “We will all get together at the end of the three-week period in the Shady Spring Classic that we have every year. We plan to have eight team in it and hopefully we can win that.”
The Shady Spring Classic tournament will be played this week from Thursday to Sunday. Teams tentatively scheduled to compete along with Shady are Beckley, Oak Hill, Riverside Greater Beckley, Princeton, Wyoming East and Tazewell, Va.
Tazewell defeated Shady Spring in the 2022 Coppinger Tournament championship game.
Admission each day is $5 or patrons can purchase a tournament arm-band for $10 that is good for each day of the event.
Concessions and 50/50 raffles will also be sold each day.
