The Future is Bright in “Brooks Vegas”

Forget the way it ended on a steamy Monday morning in Fort Myers. Now and forever, the 2025 Hernando High baseball team will hold a lofty spot in the program’s proud history.

“There’s lots of hardware (trophies) out there,” Hernando coach Tim Sims said Monday night in a phone interview from Fort Myers. “You can win the in-season tournaments and things like that and that’s nice. But it really doesn’t mean a lot in the end. But when you make it to the Final Four, it’s in the record books forever. People are going to remember a Final Four team as something special.”

And they’re going to remember the dramatic run a young team made to become only the third team in Hernando High history to make it that far. They had a chance to match the 1967 team as the only one to win a state championship.

But, ultimately, the magic ran out at Hammond Stadium against a buzzsaw in the form of South Walton High. The nationally-ranked Seahawks have a roster with five players who have either signed with or committed to major Division I programs like Florida State, Auburn and Georgia Tech. A quick glance at their roster (stocked with a slew of players listed at bigger than 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds) makes them look more like a college or professional team. And the Seahawks (31-3) played that way Monday as they defeated Hernando 17-2 in the Class 3A semi-final game. South Walton advanced to Tuesday’s championship game against Miami Springs, which defeated Bishop Verot in the other semifinal.

“It truly was David versus Goliath,” said Sims, whose team finished its season at 20-15. “They had their pick of Division I pitchers to throw at us. They outplayed us in every phase of the game.”

But the lopsided loss did nothing to diminish Hernando’s storybook season. That story started in February when the Leopards gathered to begin practicing. They were a young team and most observers viewed them as a squad that might be a year away from doing anything special. And, for a while, the Leopards looked the part. Sometimes, they were mediocre. Sometimes, they weren’t even that.

A five-game losing streak in March left their record at 8-7. There were signs of improvement down the stretch with two key wins against rival Springstead and a late-season victory against New Port Richey Mitchell High.

“That Mitchell game, we played lights out,” Sims said. “That’s where we saw how good we could be.”

But the transition wasn’t complete right away. The Leopards lost the district title to Nature Coast in a two-game sweep and they had to wait three days to find out if their season was over or if they would land in the Regional playoffs with a borderline 14-12 record. Fate was on Hernando’s side as the Florida High School Athletic Association used its funky selection process to give Hernando a No. 7 seed in an eight-team region. That’s when the magic started. Faced with the daunting task of facing higher-seeded teams in three best-of-three series, the Leopards stopped playing like an underdog and emerged as Regional champions while playing six of nine games on the road.

In rapid succession and dramatic fashion, the Leopards knocked off North Marion, The Villages Charter School and Umatilla. Players like Eric O’Dell, Gage Blade, Palmer Looper, Cadyn Williams, Austin Knierim, Kaine Ellis, Michael Saltsman took turns coming up big and Hernando’s younger players started to contribute.

And now the season is over. O’Dell, Blade, Looper, Mason Morgan, Landon Euler and Cody Whitelaw will graduate and they’ll be missed. But Hernando won’t be entering next season beneath the radar. Largely due to a talented junior class led by Ellis, Knierim and Williams, expectations will be high.

Perhaps more importantly, the returning players will know very well what it’s like to play in big games.

“The experience we gained over the last month is priceless,” Sims said. “And that’s only going to help us tremendously in the future. Only one team is going to be happy at the end of the season. This year, it wasn’t us. But it still was an outstanding season that’s going to be remembered for a long time around here.”