The six seniors on Harry S Truman’s baseball team were recognized on Thursday. To have your team’s senior celebration included on the web site, please send photos/info to SuburbanOneSports@comcast.net. Photos provided by Harry S Truman baseball. (Photo of four seniors provided courtesy of Jenn Profy)
Spring sports teams have had to find new ways to honor their seniors this year, and on Thursday, coach Tim Monaghan and athletic director Gretchen Cammiso paid brief visits at the homes of each of the Harry S Truman baseball team’s six seniors – Brayden Templeman, Dane Carpenter, Noah Helbling, Evan Profy, Chris Taylor and John Wright. Each senior received a personalized banner as well as their varsity letter or second-, third- or fourth-year player award.
Coach Tim Monaghan said: “We wanted to do something to recognize the seniors – that their season was coming to an end and their participation. Try and bring a smile to their faces for once instead of all this bad news. It’s heartbreaking. They didn’t do anything wrong - it’s suddenly ripped from them, and there’s nothing they can do about it. There are no other outlets that they can really vent their frustration. We met as a team the last day and tried to give them the message that this shutdown that we thought would be a week or two would be just another thing that we would have to overcome. Overcome is like our theme for the season. Over the past couple of years, we didn’t have a home field, so we had to look to overcome that. That was going be our message – this is just another thing we have to overcome, and to not have an opportunity to do that with this group of guys is so disappointing.
“Especially for a kid like Evan Profy – you groom a kid like him to really be one of the top players in the area this year. Not that he wasn’t able to have that pay off, but you don’t really have a chance to have one of the top three, four, five players in the league on your team. When you do, you’re excited about it and how he can lift up other guys and elevate them to another level. For him not to have that opportunity to chase personal records and accolades and even to finish out possibly playing home games by the end of the season - a lot of things were taken away from this group, and my heart breaks for them.
“This group of seniors was a mixed bag. Evan Profy and Noah Helbling had been four-year varsity players. Dane Carpenter broke his wrist at the beginning of his junior year, so he missed games. John Wright missed some time as a junior, so this was his time to get back on the field. Brayden Templeman was a guy that transferred, and this was his first chance to earn a spot with guys he played with in middle school. He went to North Carolina and came back, and he misses out on that opportunity. So we had two guys who were really big parts and cogs of the things we did over the last four years, a couple guys that we were hoping would grow into big roles this year like Dane Carpenter and John Wright and some guys that were getting a new opportunity, but none of that really worked out for them.”
Evan Profy said: “It was nice of them coming to the house and all that, and it brings some light to the situation.
“(The shutdown) was hard because we didn’t think it was going to be the entire season. When it first happened, we were all bummed out because our Florida trip got cancelled. The day all the schools got shut down is the day we were supposed to leave for Florida. We were all really excited to go to that, but we were like, ‘It’s fine – we’ll still have the season at least.’ Then this escalated even more, and we don’t even have a season. It’s hard. It sucks for me, but at least I’m still playing in college. I really feel bad for the guys that this is going to be their last time playing. We still keep in touch, we’re still all close friends, but we’re not hanging out and talking on the field every day like we should be.”
Noah Helbling said: “The visit today was heartfelt. I didn’t know we were getting (personalized) posters – that was pretty cool. I was really stoked about it honestly.
“Packing up our bags into the cars to go down to Florida and then getting a call later that night that the trip was cancelled, that the Disney hotel was closed. It was hard to get over for a little bit, but I thought we would still play. I did not think this would happen at all. The hardest part is not seeing all my teammates and not seeing everyone. It’s just hard.”
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