A strong baseball season seemed on the horizon for Sedona Red Rock High School. The Scorpions entered the year with a deep core of experienced varsity players and started 3-0 in non-tournament games. Then, things came to a grinding halt for the SRRHS team.

The COVID-19 pandemic first caused the season to be suspended. While the Arizona Interscholastic Association initially hoped that a shortened spring sports season could still be played, those feelings were proven to be overly optimistic. As has been the case for professional sports and other events around world throughout the crisis — the season was canceled.

“Everyone was pretty bummed,” senior Cooper Barber said. “It was the point in the season where everyone starts coming together — the team relationship. We’ve all been playing together for a really long time, but starting out was a little difficult. But we were starting to get back into it and starting to win a little bit when it happened.”

“We were looking forward to our season,” junior Nate Ross said. “We understood where it was coming from, canceling the season, but I think we were pretty disappointed
when it went through.”

While the pitching was inconsistent — as it often is in the early part of a baseball season — the bats were alive for the Scorpions. Including the four tournament games, Sedona batters put up an impressive
.319/.483/.461 slash line on the season, scoring 10 runs in one game and 15 in two others. While the SRRHS offense didn’t hit any home runs, they made up for it in other ways, recording five doubles, four triples and 39 stolen bases.

There is some positive news for the Scorpions on the horizon though. As a rule, high school teams that have Sedona’s varsity experience will be senior laden. But the SRRHS team is an exception to that rule. The Scorpions will lose only two players — Barber and fellow senior Tama Scharnhorst — to graduation.

So, while COVID-19 did end Sedona’s season, it by and large did not end the team’s run altogether. The Scorpion team that takes the field in the spring of 2021 will be remarkably similar to the one that played for SRRHS in 2020. With even extra hunger coming from this season’s cancellation, the SRRHS players are already upbeat about what kind of season they’ll have when most of them are seniors.

“We’re going to have a rebound tendency, get bigger, stronger, faster,” junior Matt Capozzi said. “And it’s our senior season so we’re going to be more dedicated, even with the fall sports. But we’re going to really want to get out there because we missed our season. We’ll have
stuff to prove.”

And with that, the expectations are already high. Partially because, while most of this season was canceled, most of the players who will be seniors for the Scorpions in 2021 will still have at least one full varsity season under their belts.

Additionally, as seniors, the motivation will be strong to close out not only their high school baseball careers but, in most cases, their careers in competitive baseball and sports in general.

“Next year I think our goal is of course to try to win as many games as we can,” junior Jaiah Grondin said, adding that he hoped the team would “have a great year, have fun and make as many memories as we can. Because for a lot of us, it will probably be the last time we play a competitive sport like that.”