Coral Gables United In Quest To Overcome Playoff Hump

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Coco Montes thinks every day about how badly he wants to hop into a dogpile at the end of the baseball season. The senior is entering his fourth varsity season as a starter and has lost in the district championship each of those seasons. Like many of his teammates, the shortstop is tired of second place. They are tired of making a quick exit from the regional playoffs. These guys are looking to finally jump on the dogpile, make a run and go to states.

“I just want to win finally one year and make people remember us,” Montes said. “This is by far one of the best teams that I’ve ever played with; we have so much talent and like ten of us have been together since eighth grade. We love each other and we’re like brothers, and we just want to enjoy our last year together.”

The Cavaliers returned a very seasoned and experienced core this year, which includes 15 seniors on the roster. The majority of those seniors have played together for many years, and it is a bittersweet realization that this year is also their last hurrah together. They have already joked about how difficult the end-of-the-season-banquet is going to be on all of them. This includes their Manager, Phil Wisser, who has grown very close to them over the years together.

“Obviously it is a special group,” Wisser said. “The ultimate thing is we kind of knew this coming in about five years ago. As a freshman team nine of them played together and they really just have the camaraderie, the togetherness and the brotherhood of this team. Obviously we have our fights and our arguments, but at the end of the day they are still brothers and they still love each other. These guys know I’m real close to all of them. At the end of the day the sky is the limit; how far we can go depends on how bad we want it. I know there are a lot of quality teams out there, but we definitely know what we are capable of doing.”

Already the team has four guys slated to play college baseball after high school, and the goal is to get all 15 seniors signed to play somewhere next year. But the ultimate goal is the same as it is for most programs, and that is to win a state championship. The team knows it still needs to get over the hump of the regional playoffs, but in order to get that done they also have to get back to that position. They have to shake off the previous frustration and just keep working harder. The hopes are that this is that year that they break through, and they are doing everything they can to make it possible.

Coral Gables is strong in all the right places to succeed on the baseball diamond. Montes anchors a solid middle infield along with X Factor Franky Montesino, speedy center fielder Raymond Gonzalez leads the outfield corps and ace Andrew Cabezas leads a solid pitching staff that ends with closer Tyler Santana. The roster has a lot of depth, and even some of the younger guys like Elijah Eusebio and Jordan Morina are proving ready to step into larger roles this season.

There are so many intangibles to a unique and talented group such as this one, and yet even so there is no question that the core to it all is senior catcher Elih Marrero. This veteran backstop is coming off a standout junior campaign and an incredible summer season, and he has earned the honor and distinction as being the leader of this ball club.

“Being a leader is someone special; a leader is someone everybody looks up to,” Marrero said. “You’ve got to do everything right because if you cut corners everybody is going to follow you. You’ve got to be on the straight and narrow every day every time. It starts at school; you’ve got to be at school on time, and you’ve got to be to work at practice on time. This is a special group of guys and I’ve been around these guys since seventh grade and we are a very close team. This could be a very good year if we all come together as one and if we work hard and do our job and do what we know we have to do.”

Coach Wisser admits that Marrero made a huge jump this season. In his first summer season, he became rated among the top players in the state of Florida and also on the East Coast. He was one of 40 players invited to play in the All American game at Petco Park in San Diego. Then the highlight of his summer came when he made Team USA’s 18U team and went out to Mexico and was able to win a gold medal.

“It’s a great experience from having a regular summer to being an 18U All American and representing the country,” Marrero admitted. “What can I say? I never thought I would be here but after all the hard work I put in all of these years in high school it is really paying off.”

At the end of the day the team motto is just to work as hard as you can. One thing Wisser has to say is that they are working hard this fall. They’ve done things a little different this year by adding 5:30 AM workouts in the fall. The team got lucky to add the Gutierrez brothers who were previously on the Archbishop Carroll coaching staff, and the brothers are working on training and getting stronger for the spring season. They have scaled back their total number of fall games so they can focus more time on training and conditioning.

The only other way the team knows how to prepare is to schedule the best of the best and see how they fare. The team has never backed down from tough opponents and they know it helps to put them in the right place for the playoffs. After last season’s daunting schedule, the Cavaliers just may have a tougher go at it in 2015. Beyond an incredibly tough district that includes Columbus and Braddock, the team is also playing in the HSBN March Madness Tournament that features the top 32 teams in South Florida. They are also playing West Broward, Boca, Douglas, Miami Springs, Mater Academy and Westminster Christian.

“We always want to play the best teams and this year I think we have our toughest schedule in my four years here,” Montes said. “It’s tough playing teams like Columbus and Braddock but we love that competition. It’s just great games and being in the game gets us hyped really good. There are a lot of rivalries in our district. We’re coming in with the mentality that we should be able to knock them out and that is what makes us better. Sometimes we cross the line in playing with too much confidence, which is what we have to eliminate because it hurt us last year. But we think we can beat any team that shows up on the field that day.”

The Cavaliers displayed their aggressive style in the way they played through last year’s difficult schedule. It is a group that plays a rugged and passionate brand of baseball, complimenting their energy and enthusiasm with an equal dose of speed, power and consistency. They do not shy away from playing the best of the best, and they know they have earned the right do be on the field against them. The team believes they can win every time out, and understands that they are always playing other teams that are more than capable of beating them. It makes every day a challenge and they love to prove to themselves that they can always live up to those standards.

“We have a lot of fire and a lot of energy and we try to play the game the right way. We just try to do everything possible the right way,” Wisser said. “They are hungry. Seeing videos and seeing the past history of the Coral Gables baseball team, there is such a rich tradition. We’ve put ourselves in those games and we haven’t been able to do it, and all we can do is tell them to keep putting ourselves in that spot and know that it’s got to go our way eventually. Hopefully this is the year we can make that hump and make a deep run.”

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