Cooter BB resumes being Cooter in second half of fall season

On the final day of August, the Cooter High School baseball squad dropped an 11-8 decision to a very solid Senath-Hornersville team, which lowered the Wildcats’ fall season record to 1-5.

“We knew that we were inexperienced,” veteran Cooter Coach David Mathis said, “and we knew that those kids didn’t get a lot of at-bats (in years past). We couldn’t play (junior varsity games) because we didn’t have enough kids last year to do so.”

So, for the Wildcat players, this 19-game fall schedule became imperative to not only their individual development but to the future of Cooter baseball.

“We have a process that we go through,” Mathis continued, “of conditioning, and then reps, I am extremely hard on them, and then we take a step back and let them go.”

Following that loss to the Lions, the Wildcat players “went.”

The next day, Cooter topped Bernie 6-1, a team that eventually won 11 games and is battling for a championship in their own Fall Baseball Tournament this week. That victory was the first of 10 in the Wildcats’ final 13 games.

Cooter, who only had two seniors, and only a couple of players had ever gotten varsity playing time, wrapped up its fall season with an 11-8 record and championships won in the Tri-County Conference regular season and league tournament.

“We gave them six goals,” Mathis said, “and they accomplished four of them.”

The turnaround was as stunning to some as the slow start had been.

To put Cooter baseball in context, the Wildcats had dominated their way through one-loss fall seasons in five of the previous six autumns.

“We graduated seven seniors, all of them starters, and two were all-state (players),” Mathis said earlier this season. “Only three of our guys even got at-bats last year.”

So, Mathis and his players just did what they knew how to do, which was to work hard and see what happened.

After allowing 21 combined runs in a pair of losses to Bell City and Senath-Hornersville, the Cooter pitching, and defense limited opponents to two runs or less in 10 of its final 13 games.

“We told the kids that we knew that there would be mistakes made because a lot of the kids were new to the spots that they were in,” Mathis said. “But we wanted them to play as hard as they possibly could and be coachable, and they did every bit of that.”

Mathis watched as players, whom he admitted thought about cutting them two years ago, gained so much experience that they began “taking 12- and 13-pitch at-bats,” according to the coach.

“We started seeing things happen,” Mathis said. “We got bunts down and we started running the bases correctly.

“It was just a process.”

Initially, some viewed the demise of Cooter baseball as an opportunity.

After watching the Wildcats dominate the Bootheel for decades, there were a handful of opposition that were ready to pounce on Mathis’ kids.

“We’ve won 16 of the last 17 Districts,” Mathis said earlier this season, “and 17 of the last 18 at the Class 1 level.

“We had people who watched us (this fall) and say, ‘Man, I thought Cooter was good.’”

Mathis took an “Us against the World” philosophy and his players bought into it, which “fueled” their drive.

“We took the (criticism) personally,” Mathis said. “We told (the players) that you don’t inherit standards. You have to make your own standards. We wanted them to play up to those, and they did.”