Oak Ridge looks to continue winning trend

When Jason Niswonger arrived at Oak Ridge High School a decade ago and became the coach of the school's cross country team, there weren't high expectations.

"We just had this air of losing," said Niswonger, now the school's baseball coach as well. "We always found a way to lose in everything we did, and it was just contagious."

Now there is a different bug in the air.

"In junior high, they started finally winning and that got contagious," Niswonger said.

The Blue Jays baseball team will try to complete one of the most successful -- and perhaps the best -- years of boys sports in school history with a return to the state playoffs.

Oak Ridge's Brett Thomas pitches during Friday's 6-1 win against Oran. Thomas, a junior, has been a key ingredient to the Blue Jays' impovement in both baseball and basketball. (KRISTIN EBERTS)

At least that is the plan for the end of the season. Right now, the plan is for younger players to execute well and gain experience in the absence of senior Garret Light.

"We're frustrated right now," Niswonger said. "We're young. With Garret we start two seniors, and without him we've got one. We start two freshmen all the time and we're going to take our lumps."

Light, the team's No. 2 pitcher and a .380 hitter a year ago, will have surgery Tuesday to repair torn cartilage in his knee and is expected to miss at least two weeks.

"I talked to Garret about this, and he knows it, too, that we're going to get better in the long run because we have to play without him," Niswonger said. "We've got guys getting experience out there that wouldn't have gotten it normally."

Youth was an asset for the cross county team in the fall. Two freshmen, two juniors and Light combined for a second-place team finish in Class 1, the program's best performance.

Over the winter, the basketball team finished 22-5. Although the season ended with a six-point loss to eventual state runner-up Bernie in the district final, it was the first time the program reached 20 wins.

Last year the baseball team made it to the state quarterfinals for the first time.

Things haven't always been this good for the Blue Jays.

While the results have improved the past few years at the varsity level, the change began when Light and his teammates were in elementary school.

"In third and fourth grade we would practice just as hard as the high school because it seemed like they had a losing mentality," Light said. "Our parents had a lot to do with that because they supported us fully through these years, and they help us keep going and they take us to everything.

"We just get way more opportunities than the kids before us did to win."

It was after a particularly poor experience his freshman season that Light had a talk with Brett Thomas, who was a year behind him in school.

"I just remember one time Garret Light was talking to me," Thomas said, "and his freshman year the basketball team struggled a little bit and he came up to me and goes, 'We got to do something about this. Me and you have got to do something.'"

After a rough beginning, the two have been working together successfully.

"See, in elementary we learned that me and Garret can't play on different teams because it just doesn't work," Thomas said. "We are the world's worst sore losers -- perhaps the worst -- so we would get into fights over elementary basketball, and then we learned once we started playing on the same team we got along quite a bit better."

For players like Caleb Elam, who earned all-state honors in cross country, baseball season marks the end of back-to-back-to-back seasons.

"For cross country runners, they literally practice two weeks before school starts and sometimes until two weeks after school ends," Thomas said.

Elam said everyone from students to teachers to community members have commended the players for the turnaround in the sports programs.

"It feels amazing," Elam said. "It's awesome to be a part of that."

Light also has taken part in the success of each sport.

"It's hard," he said about switching quickly from one sport to the next. "It's definitely demanding on your body. I've been hurt almost half the year pretty much ... It definitely wears your body down, but it doesn't wear your spirit down at all."

While a 3-3 start to the baseball season hasn't been ideal, Niswonger said there is plenty of time and opportunity for another run at the final four.

"If we can play .500 ball without Garret going into the districts we could still be a two, three, four seed, and if we're the three seed we'll be OK because we know we're better than that," Niswonger said.

And that knowledge reflects a confidence the Blue Jays have lacked in the past.

"You get to a point where you like to be saying that you're changing the tide of a school," Thomas said, "but right now I think that we're at the point that we're setting that quota for the younger years to come to where we don't have to change the tide, we're just on the tide."