In the dugout of the Hernando High baseball team at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers on Monday morning, a white jersey will hang proudly.
It’s not just any jersey. It’s a good luck charm for a young team that seemingly has come out of nowhere to meet South Walton in a 10 a.m. matchup in the semifinals of the Florida Class 3A state championship tournament. The jersey, perhaps better than anything, also tells the proud story of Hernando baseball’s past and present with one common thread — the last name Ellis.
Grover Ellis is one of the Hernando players from the 1967 state championship team (the only one in school history to win one) to sign the jersey when that entire team was inducted as a group to the Hernando High Hall of Fame a few years back. He’ll be sitting in the stands behind the dugout where the next two generations of his lineage will be coaching and playing in the game.
Grover’s son, Tyson, is an assistant on Coach Tim Sim’s staff. Grover’s grandson (and Tyson’s son), Kaine, will be the starting catcher for the current-day Leopards.
In a lot of ways, the current Leopards have already been following in the footsteps of the 1967 team coached by the legendary Tom Varn.
“That was a long time ago and I don’t remember many specific details,” said Grover, who was a power-hitting third baseman. “But what I do remember is that nobody expected much from us. But we were a scrappy little team. When we got into the playoffs, we just kept taking it one game at a time and we just kept winning.”
It’s been pretty much the same story for the Leopards this season.
“Coach Sims likes to say that we’re good enough to beat anybody, but we’re also capable of losing to anybody,” said Tyson Ellis, who starred as an infielder for the Leopards on the Bronson Arroyo-led teams of the mid-1990s. “With us, anything is possible. That was pretty much the story of the regular season.”
Hernando started off as a young team that was viewed as a year away from doing anything special. After a five-game losing streak in March, their record was 8-7. They played some good baseball down the stretch, but were eliminated in the first round of the district playoffs by rival Nature Coast, which went on to lose the district championship to South Sumter.
On the night South Sumter defeated Nature Coast, Hernando’s season was hanging by a thread. They were 14-12 and it was quite possible their season already was over. The only thing that could extend it would be a Regional playoff berth when the Florida High School Activities Association announced the playoff field the next afternoon.
As Kaine, a junior who has been a starter since his freshman year, watched the Sharks and Raiders from the sidelines in Bushnell, he casually chatted with a reporter and offered some prophetic words.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Kaine said. “But I believe that if we do get into the playoffs, we could go a long way.”
Perhaps catching the collective eye of the selection committee with an impressive late-season victory against New Port Richey Mitchell High or perhaps riding their historical reputation, the Leopards slid into the playoffs. Still, things didn’t look too promising. Hernando was given a No. 7 seed in an eight-team field. To get through the Regionals, they would have to win three best-of-three series against higher-seed teams and play six of nine games on the road.
But that’s precisely what the Leopards did. Riding Kaine’s hot bat as well as the hot bats of junior shortstop Austin Knierim, senior first baseman Eric O’Dell and senior center fielder Palmer Looper and the strong pitching of Knierim and junior left-hander Cadyn Williams, the Leopards eliminated North Marion, The Villages Charter School and Umatilla in dramatic fashion.
So, why did Kaine see this coming when almost nobody else did?
“How much everybody cared for each other,” he said. “How hard everybody plays for each other. I just felt like all we needed was a chance.”
The Leopards got that chance and made the most of it. Along the way, they’ve captured the attention of the Brooksville community.
“Everywhere I go at school and around town, everybody’s excited about what we’ve done and how we’ve been doing it,” Kaine said. “The whole town is very excited.”
And it’s not over yet. It’s safe to say that a good chunk of Brooksville’s population will be in Fort Myers on Monday morning. If the Leopards can get past South Walton, they’ll be in a position where only the 1967 Hernando team has been. They could be playing for a state championship Tuesday at 4 p.m. against either Miami Springs or Bishop Verot.
“This team is a lot like our team,” said Grover, who has been a fixture in the stands at Hernando games the last three years. “Anything was possible with us and anything is possible with them. I would be absolutely thrilled if my grandson and his teammates match what we did. That would be very special to me and to all of Brooksville.”
