By STEFAN MODRICH, Staff Writer
The 2019 season was a reset button for a young Brownsville Pace baseball program that finished 11-13 in District 32-5A and came up one game shy of qualifying for the playoffs with its group of seven freshmen.
One year later, a more mature Vikings squad felt it was poised to make a postseason run in a competitive district before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic brought the season to a close.
“The last few games before the pandemic shut everything down, we were playing some pretty good baseball,” Pace coach Roy Rodriguez said. “There was always that premise that we could be pretty good this year.”
The Vikings picked up a 9-1 win over San Antonio Brackenridge in a tournament Feb. 27 and an 8-3 victory over Progreso on March 3. Pace also defeated Edinburg Economedes, La Joya Juarez-Lincoln and St. Joseph Academy.
“We really thought this season was going to be a big stepping stone for our program,” said Chase Morales, a pitcher and first baseman.
This year’s Pace squad featured all nine returning starters, including senior utility player Jose Lara and junior pitcher/outfielder Jose Banda.
The remaining seven were sophomores: infielder/pitcher John Garcia, outfielder/pitcher Jose Reyna, outfielder Gustavo Puente, infielder/pitcher Agustine Garcia, catcher Max Parga, and pitchers John Moody and Morales.
“We knew coming in that we were going to be young,” Garcia said. “But we were ready for it. … We were really excited because we knew we had a team that could make the playoffs and go a few rounds. We knew we had a good team, even though we were young.”
Garcia said in his offseason he plans to participate in showcases in August in the Rio Grande Valley, Dallas and San Antonio areas.
Several Pace players are multisport athletes like Morales, a tight end and flex receiver on the school’s football team and a center on the basketball team.
Many of them grew up playing with or against each other in the West Brownsville Little League, one of the reasons for the Viking’s cohesion.
“Each of us knew what we were capable of,” Morales said. “We were pretty excited to play as freshmen, and just getting the opportunity to play and to start. … It was fun competing against each other and learning everyone’s strengths and weaknesses (prior to high school).”
Moody led Pace’s rotation, and Reyna, a lefty, was one of the team’s top relievers.
“(Moody) won some big games for us last year,” Rodriguez said. “He started strong for us this year before district. … (Reyna) would come in and was pretty much our setup man at the end of our games this year.”
Rodriguez said his squad’s biggest strength was the group’s continuity and its aptitude and desire to learn.
“A lot of the kids were coming back after playing varsity for the first time last year,” Rodriguez said. “They pretty much know the system on both sides of the ball, and it was a lot easier for the coaches this year to just polish up and work on the weaknesses, whereas last year we had to start from scratch.”
The Vikings are confident that they’ll come back stronger and hungrier next year.
“We believe we’re a really good team,” Morales said. “We believe we can compete with anybody in our district. Often we would just have a bad time or have bad slumps, but we’re a top caliber team, we all believe that. We know the damage we can do in our district and compete.”