Top-ranked Spartans lament lost season

Mountain Brook High School head baseball coach Lee Gann was more familiar with this year’s senior class than any other he’s coached.

That’s because his son, Curt, was part of the 15-player group that ascended to seniority in the Spartans program for the 2020 season.

“I’ve been coaching these guys since they were 7 or 8 years old,” Gann said. “They’ve grown up together. It’s been really fun watching them develop over a 10-year period.”

But the class held much more value to the program than simply of a sentimental nature.

Mountain Brook, led largely by that senior class, proved itself one of the top teams in the state of Alabama before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the season prematurely in mid-March.

The Spartans finished their season March 14 with an 11-2 win over George County of Mississippi. The victory put the team at 16-2 on the year. The following week, Mountain Brook was ranked No. 1 in Class 7A by the Alabama Sports Writers Association.

“Those 15 seniors were some of the best leaders I’ve ever been around. We had a lot of the puzzle pieces to create an extremely successful season,” Gann said.

Mountain Brook embarked on a trip to Mississippi on March 11 with a sense that things may be different by the time the team returned home. That night, the Spartans attended a Mississippi State baseball game in Biloxi. The same evening, the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament in Nashville was altered and later canceled due to the pandemic.

The following day, the Spartans had a team workout during which concern began to mount amongst the players.

“Kids start hearing things, and they started becoming a little more distracted and thinking of what could be or not be,” Gann recalled.

By the end of the weekend, school had been postponed indefinitely, but Mountain Brook honed in and won three out of its four games in Mississippi. That impressed the head coach.

“What surprised and excited me about this group was how they stayed focused,” Gann said. “We kept talking about taking care of the things you can control. That was the mark of that weekend. We finished on a really good note, winning the last three games.”

At the time, it was hoped that operations across the state would return to normal within a few weeks, but it became apparent quickly that would not be the case.

Gann remembers the moment vividly when it all came to a definitive end, on March 26 around 4:15 p.m. During a press conference announcing the closure of in-person education, Gov. Kay Ivey and state Superintendent Eric Mackey also announced high school athletics were canceled for the remainder of the spring.

“It was a very devastating time because we were all trying to be optimistic, believing that we were going to play again. When that message came in, it was very disappointing. It upset our players tremendously,” Gann said.

The Spartans will never know what they could have accomplished had the 2020 season been played in its entirety. They started the season with a win over Gardendale and an extra-inning victory over Oak Mountain. After an extra-inning loss to Thompson, Mountain Brook went on a tear, winning its next 11 games.

That winning streak included victories over Chelsea, which finished the year ranked No. 1 in 6A, a sweep of Jasper (ranked No. 5 in 5A) and a title in the Perfect Game HS Showdown in Hoover.

On March 5, the Spartans posted dominating wins over Westminster Christian (Florida) and Locust Grove (Georgia), two prominent programs in the Southeast. The following day, the Spartans edged Bob Jones, the top team in 7A at the time. Less than 12 hours later, the morning of March 7, the Spartans beat Buford (Georgia) 1-0 to win the tournament.

“Right then, we knew we had something special with these guys. Holding up a banner of a championship and a trophy, the guys were really excited going into that next week, which ended up being our last week,” Gann said.

Mountain Brook finished the abbreviated season atop not only the ASWA poll, but also was considered the top team in the state — regardless of classification — by Prep Baseball Report. MaxPreps rated the Spartans as the 22nd best team in the nation and Perfect Game USA had them 28th.

“I felt like we were as good as anybody in the state, from top to bottom,” Gann said. “People will remember this team as a season with one of the best, if not the best, teams to come through Mountain Brook. We competed at an extremely high level against very competitive teams.”

Will Yarbro, Davis White, Harrison Ware, David Stone, Emerson Ritchie, Edward Reed, Porter Phelan, Ford Kelly, Beau Hubbard, Harrison Hodges, Clark Griffin, Alex Gauld, Curt Gann, Edward Berry and Will Baynes may not have left with tangible hardware from the 2020 season, but the group of seniors won’t soon be forgotten.

“Each one of them, I can’t say enough about them and what they did for our program,” Lee Gann said.