2015 Perfect Game High School Baseball Preview Index | Pacific Region HS Preview
The baseball program at College Park High School in the East San Francisco Bay city of Pleasant Hill, Calif., has asserted itself as a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) North Coast Section and Perfect Game High School Pacific Region (California and Hawaii) powerhouse over the past three seasons.
In 2012 and 2013, the Falcons advanced into the semifinal round of the NCS Division 2 playoffs, only to fall short of the championship game each time. Last spring they not only took that next step into the title game but left the ballpark in Kentfield, Calif., as the CIF North Coast Section D2 champions.
The 2014 Falcons boasted a roster that included seven juniors that had already committed to NCAA Division I teams, including University of Washington recruit Joe DeMers.
If there was anyone on that team that could justifiably wear a big red “S” on his chest it was DeMers, a right-handed pitcher that had already seen the world as a member of the 14u, 16u and 18u USA Baseball National Teams. In the summer of 2014 he would excel at both the Perfect Game National Showcase in Fort Myers, Fla., and the PG All-American Classic in San Diego.
Now that the calendar has flipped and the College Park Falcons are ready to take that big leap into the 2015 season, DeMers – the national class of 2015’s No. 38-ranked overall prospect, No. 6 in California – has rightly re-established his place in the spotlight.
But as College Park – ranked No. 8 nationally by PG’s Preseason Top-50 Rankings – prepares to defend its newly defined CIF NCS championship, it’s important to remember that this is a team that is the sum of its parts with many mechanisms working to make sure the engine purrs along without any problems.
“We’re a team – we’re a group – where there is no real leader,” Nick Oar, a thoughtful, articulate senior first baseman and catcher who has signed with Stanford, told PG in a telephone interview this week. “Obviously, there is Joe DeMers who has gone through Perfect Game and has gotten all the publicity, but he doesn’t act like the guy who’s leading the group. He’s not the guy that’s saying ‘We should do this, we should do that.’
“We’re all valued within the team; it’s more of a group effort,” Oar continued. “To put it in political terms, it’s more of an oligarchy than a monarchy.”
WHILE THERE MAY NOT BE A KING IN THE GROUP, it is safe to say that DeMers and Oar (ranked No. 318 nationally) are two of the more prominent princes in the royal family.
They are joined by a formidable group of fellow seniors, including right-hander/outfielder Trevor Larnach (No. 344, Oregon State), catcher/infielder Willie MacIver (top-500, Washington), left-hander Chris Brown (t-1,000, UC Davis), outfielder Jeffrey Mitchell (t-1,000, California) and catcher/infielder Noah Burnham (t-1,000, UC Santa Barbara).
DeMers, Brown and Mitchell have been on the College Park varsity roster for four years. While the Falcons came up just short during the trio’s freshman and sophomore seasons, they won it all as juniors.
“This is a great group of guys; we’ve all played together since we were 8-years-old so we’re all very close,” DeMers told PG this week. “We’re a very mature group and it’s been fun playing together.”
If there is a monarch in this oligarchical system, it would be head coach Andy Tarpley, who took over the program just ahead of the 2013 seasons.
He played collegiately at the University of California-Berkeley where he joined the Golden Bears at the 1992 College World Series. He previously served as the hitting and third base coach at Diablo Valley College and was the head coach at Acalenes High School, while also coaching for the East Bay-based Lamorinda Baseball Club.
The core of this group of seniors has actually been playing for Tarpley since well before high school when they became active with Lamorinda. The College Park program truly does resonate with the feeling of family.
“It’s almost like I’m their older brother at this point, or like their uncle,” Tarpley told PG. “They know what I expect and they work hard, but if they get out of line they know that I’m going to put them right back in their place. At the same time there’s so much trust that’s been established that (the program) kind of runs itself at this point.”
BEFORE LOOKING AHEAD TO THE 2015 SEASON, PG asked the players and head coach to reflect briefly on the championship season of 2014, when College Park finished with an overall mark of 27-3 and won the Diablo Valley League with an 11-1 mark.
The Falcons suffered an 8-5 loss to San Ramon California High on April 22, which at the time was their third loss in the last 15 games. They then won their last 13 games, including a 7-2 victory over Kentfield Marin Catholic in the CIF NCS D2 championship game.
“We played as well as we could play all through the NCS (playoffs),” Oar said. “Early in the season we were pretty hot and it almost seemed like we were doing too well, and we went into a tournament hosted by St. Francis and we realized that we were getting a little too cocky. … We realized that we were a good team and we could play with anyone but we need to work for it.
“From then on we put our nose to the grindstone and really worked out butts off, and we really hit our stride later in the season,” he continued. “We stayed hard on top, we played defense, we threw strikes and it all clicked at the very end.”
Added DeMers: “At the beginning of the year we knew we had a chance to go far in the playoffs, and that was our goal the whole year. Our coach was reminding of us that every practice, and when it finally came true it felt like all of our hard work had paid off.”
The core group of seniors back this season all enjoyed terrific junior campaigns. DeMers was 12-2 with a 0.65 ERA, eight complete games and 94 strikeouts in 86 innings pitched; he hit .371 with three home runs, a triple, seven doubles, 32 RBI and 32 runs scored. Brown was 11-1 with a 0.78 ERA, five complete games and 54 strikeouts in 72 innings; he also hit .375 (15-for-40).
Nickolas Oar attended the 2014 PG National Showcase last June in Fort Myers, Fla.
Oar batted .359 (33-for-92) with three home runs, two triples, six doubles, 27 RBI and 20 runs; MacIver hit .370 (team-high 37 hits) with five triples, seven doubles, 24 RBI and a team-high 32 runs; Larnach hit .436 (34-for-78) with 14 doubles and 30 RBI; Mitchell was at .309 (21-for-68) with 21 stolen bases in 22 attempts.
After that championship season, all seven of the top seniors continued to compete at PG events throughout the summer, with DeMers getting the most attention at the PG National Showcase and the PG All-American Classic. The Classic is an elite all-star game involving the top 50 or so seniors to be played each summer at the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park.
“Perfect Game always has great events,” DeMers said. “The National Showcase and the All-American (Classic) were great. There were all the best players in the country and that’s what I looking forward to, pitching against the best of the best.
“It was a great honor to be able to play with and against those guys (at the Classic),” he said. “Petco Park was awesome and everything we did outside of the game was fun.”
Oar also had the opportunity to attend the PG National: “That was some of the best pitching I’ve ever seen,” he said of the experience. “That was the best compilation of players I’ve ever seen … and it was incredible seeing 94 (mph fastballs) consistently; I never even conceived that as a possibility at a showcase.”
The core of this roster also played basketball right up until this winter when they decided to leave the hoops behind and concentrate on baseball, the sport they will play in college. Instead of hooping it up, they got into the gym to train for the baseball season and Tarpley reports that they all added muscle and are “meaner and stronger than ever.”
WITH THE 2015 SEASON SET TO GET UNDER WAY on March 3 at Liberty, the Falcons are ready to put the momentum they carried into all of that offseason conditioning work into play and they feel like it is something that can carry over from one season to the next.
“I think we know what it takes now, how many hours it takes and how hard work will pay off,” DeMers said. “We’re trying to stay focused and do the same thing this year.”
Oar is of the belief that the Falcons will come out even more on fire this spring than they were while winding up their championship season of a year ago. With so many top prospects returning from teams that have gone a combined 47-9-1 the past two seasons, there’s every reason to anticipate a fast start. The players can also build off their close relationship with Tarpley.
“We’ve been coached by Tarp for years,” Oar said. “We know all of his little ‘Tarpisms’ and all his ways to play the game. He makes sure that we play the game the right way and we respect the game. I really do think it all stems from him.”
“Coach Tarp has a good idea of what it takes to win,” DeMers added. “He knows that you definitely have to come together as a team – it’s not (an individual) sport – and that’s the only way you can achieve winning a championship.”
Tarpley is not shy about expressing his exuberance for the roster he has before him in 2015. While stopping short of calling it one-of-a-kind he did call it a “once-in-forever” situation that he hopes to make the most of. He believes that because the guys play more like a band of brothers than just a rag-tag collection of individual parts, only good things will happen.
“They get on each other and they have expectations but they pull for each other; they root for each other and they really are a team,” Tarpley said. “They all expect so much out of themselves individually, but even if three of them fail and four of them have good games, we’re not losing; that’s just kind of the way it is.”
THERE IS ONE ASPECT OF THIS YEAR’S SEASON that is quite different from the previous three when the Falcons raced into the final four of the CIF North Coast Section playoffs. The CIF has reclassified the program to Division 1 from Division 2, which means they will be playing higher enrollment schools once the postseason rolls around. College Park continues to play in the Diablo Valley League.
“We’re now a D1 school which I think it great. That’s where we need to be, at least for this group, to be challenged,” Tarpley said. “It’s another goal to put before them that they haven’t accomplished. They’re chomping at the bit; they’re ready to compete.”
The Falcons’ regular season includes a trip east in late March to take part in the National High School Invitational tournament in Cary, N.C. College Park’s first-round opponent at the event hasn’t been announced yet but the field includes 16 of the top teams in the country.
“We are looking for that (repeat) championship,” Oar said. “We do know that this year is going to be a lot harder in the playoffs because we’re Division 1 and we’ll be playing against the (bigger schools).”
At some point down the line – once during the regular season and perhaps again in the NCS D1 playoffs – the Falcons just might cross paths with the De La Salle Spartans with their ace left-hander Justin Hooper, a certain first-round MLB draft pick with a 97 mph fastball that PG ranks the No. 3 overall senior prospect in all the land.
“We’re looking for Hooper,” Oar said with a laugh. “That’s our guy.”
Despite its final four finishes in 2012 and 2013, Tarpley feels as if College Park flew a little under the radar on its way to the CIF North Coast Section championship in 2014. The Falcons were bothered by some injuries early in the season and dropped three games but then got healthy, peaked at the right time and did what they were capable of doing.
In 2015, they are now proudly wearing that target on their backs, safe in the knowledge that they have one of the best teams not only in Northern California but in the entire PG High School Pacific Region. They know they will be getting their opponents’ best efforts every time out and they wouldn’t have it any other way. The oligarchy is firmly in place, yet nothing is a given.
“We’re ranked … No. 8 by Perfect Game and that doesn’t mean anything,” Tarpley said. “It just means that you had the year that you had last year and you’ve got a lot of guys that are going to move on and play this game, but as a team we’re still in this together and we can’t expect to be perfect.”