It’s not how you start

Readers who are not from the Philadelphia area will not recognize the names on this Top 25 list of high school teams.  

The list, if you look at the date, is the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Top 25 baseball teams in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania at the very start of the season.  One team, North Penn High School led by Coach Kevin Manero, is not on the list of 25.  Now let’s take a look at the final Top 10 list from the Inquirer at the end of the season.

North Penn is #1 because they recently won the AAAA Pennsylvania State Championship.

The names are from the Philly area but the lessons from their season apply to any program.  Here is what North Penn overcame on its way to the championship.

• They finished the season in third place in their league’s division.  Getting into the playoffs at all was not guaranteed.
• The team dealt with quite a few tumultuous issues during the season.  They are high school kids so I won’t elaborate.
• They lost their last regular season game by the mercy rule. (They later beat that same team in the state semi-finals)
• They were the last seed (12th) in their section of the district bracket.
• They finished fourth place in their district which means they lost the final two games of the district tournament.
• Finishing 4th in their district made them the last seed in the state tournament’s 16 team field.
• After being down 3-0 in the championship game, they came back to win the game 5-4 on a walk-off single in the 9th inning.

For all those teams who don’t get off to good starts, face injuries, struggle with team chemistry and cohesion, and face numerous line-up changes, keep playing and keep moving forward because you never know.  Baseball can be a weird game but it gives us so many life lessons.

In baseball and in life, it’s not how or where you start, it’s how and where you finish.