HARTLAND — It’s a nondescript piece of wood to non-players, blue with the word “CHAMPS” painted in yellow on one side.
But to the Hartland baseball team, it has two meanings.
“When you set it down, it turns into a blue line,” Hartland coach Brian Morrison explained on Wednesday. “When we cross it for practice or a game, you’re supposed to give all your concentration to the team.
“Everyone has stuff going on in their life, all the time with school and girlfriends, and coaches with wives and whatever,” he continued, “but when you cross that line you’ve got to give it all to the team, and that’s what that means. We’ve had it there ever since I started.”
The board is at the entrance to the Hartland dugout for home games and practices, and makes all road trips, including one today when the Eagles take on Saline at 5 p.m. in a Division 1 semifinal at Michigan State University.
The game will be broadcast on The Livingston Post at 4:50 p.m. The time may vary due to a 70% chance of rain in the weather forecast.
Hartland (36-5-1) will take on a Saline team (34-6) which has been one of the better teams in the state for more than two decades.
“We know they’re good,” Morrison said. “You don’t get this far and not play anyone good.. They’ve bene successful for a long time there. Scott does a nice job coaching them. They’ve got a lot of pitchers who can throw and on offense they’ve got a lot of guys who can swing. We’re going to have to not give them anything and make them earn everyhting, and see what happens.”
One of the things that has made this Hartland team stand out, as well as last year, has been an approach that focuses on what’s in front of the Eagles at a given moment and no further.
“You see a lot of good teams getting knocked out early,” Hartland senior Nathan Lohmeier said. “You start out with the top 10, and I think only two or three left now. So there were a lot of teams that had really good seasons that got knocked out becaus ethey didn’t take it game by game.
“So we know the process of we have to take care of now in order to get to our main goal. We’ve done a good job of staying focused, staying in the moment, and this is the most important thing right now, and we’ll focus on what’s next after the game.”
Morrison wouldn’t commit to naming a starting pitcher, saying either Lohmeier or right-hander Kyle Kletzka, who threw a shutout in the semifinals last year, could get the start.
Either way, Morrison knows his team won’t be rattled in part due to its experience in last year’s title run,
“I don’t think they’re going to get caught up in the moment, like happens sometimes in sports,” he said. “They’ll just play and at least that’s what I’m hoping. They’ve always done that. I don’t think it would be any different.”
But that doesn’t mean the Eagles are automatons, either.
“It’s very exciting,” second baseman Hunter Delanoy said. “We played in it last year and it was so much fun, and I can’t wait to play in it again.”
As for CHAMPS, Morrison said it was an acronym whose roots “are kind of a secret,” but Lohmeier filled in the missing information.
“Character, Honesty, Accountability, Maturity, Patience and Sportsmanship,” he said. “Once we cross that blue line, baseball is the only thing that matters. We’re not shagging fly balls and talking about what we’re doing after practice or before practice. We’re here taking care of what we have to take care of, and trusting the process. We’re doing the same thing as last year, and it’s worked out pretty good so far.”
