Louisville Slugger Select Classic #3 All-Tournament Team
EMERSON,
Ga. – In the nine years that Matt LaCour has been the head coach at
Harvard-Westlake High School in Studio City, Calif., the Wolverines
have done a lot of winning, mostly in Southern California. Last week,
they introduced those winning ways to the hills and pine forests of
Northern Georgia.
Harvard-Westlake
won five games in four days – beating two teams from Kentucky, two
from Illinois and one from Georgia – and captured the championship
at the inaugural Perfect Game Louisville Slugger Select Classic #3,
played March 30 through April 4 at Perfect Game Park South at
LakePoint.
The
Wolverines outscored their five opponents by a combined 36-12, and
rose to the top of an 11-team field that included high school teams
from Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee and Georgia, with
Harvard-Westlake as the only California entrant.
2015 Louisville Slugger Select Classic #3 co-MVP Ezra Steinberg (Photo: Harvard-Westlake)
“This
trip for us is more about the team getting to know each other on a
better level,” LaCour told PG after the Wolverines beat the
Valdosta (Ga.) Wildcats to complete their 5-0 run through the
tournament. “Just going through some adversity of having to get up
early in the morning (and) dealing with the rain, which we don’t
have to deal with a whole lot (at home).
“It
prepares these guys for college when they go to the East Coast and it
prepares us; it gives us a little more toughness for when we get back
into (CIF Mission) league play.”
The
PG Louisville Slugger Select Classic #3 championship was won on the
strength of the Wolverines’ bats and legs. Unofficially, they hit
.429 as a team (49-for-114) with 13 extra-base hits, led by the play
of co-Most Valuable Players, senior shortstop Ezra Steinberg and
junior infielder/catcher John Thomas.
Steinberg,
an Oregon signee ranked in the top-500 nationally in the class of
2015, was 9-for-14 (.643) with a double, two RBI, eight runs scored
and five stolen bases (the Wolverines stole 18 bases in 23 attempts).
Thomas, who has committed to Southern California, finished 5-for-13
(.384), with a double, triple, five RBI and four runs.
Junior
centerfielder Jack Suddleson handled the bat nicely, as well, going
6-14 (.429) with a double, two triples, six RBI and four runs; senior
catcher Tom Fuller was 5-for-13 (.384) with five RBI; senior second
baseman/outfielder Chase Aldridge was 3-for-8 (.375) with two RBI,
three runs, five walks and one hit-by-pitch, and junior third baseman
Cameron Deere was 4-for-12 (.333) with five RBI at the plate, and
allowed two earned runs during a complete-game, five-hitter with four
strikeouts from the mound.
These
guys not only know the game of baseball inside and out, they also
know their way around a text book. Aldrich and Suddleson have signed
with/committed to Harvard and Fuller has signed with Yale.
“We’re
a highly academic school and we sometimes don’t get the best
athletes, so we have to play baseball the right way,” LaCour said.
“We have to execute the game plan, we have to run the bases the
right way and we rely on that – along with our pitching – to keep
us in the game and win games against good teams.”
2015 Louisville Slugger Select Classic #3 co-MVP John Thomas (Photo: Harvard-Westlake)
It’s
not as if LaCour – who was the head coach for the West Team at the
2013 Perfect Game All-American Classic in San Diego – hasn’t been
afforded the opportunity to coach some pretty outstanding athletes
during his tenure at Harvard-Westlake.
Pitchers
Max Fried and Lucas Giolito are 2012 graduates who both played in the
2011 PG All-American Classic and were first-round draft picks of the
San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals, respectively, in the 2012
MLB June Amateur Draft.
Right-hander/shortstop/third
baseman Jack Flaherty played in the 2013 PG All-American Classic with
LaCour as his head coach, and was a first-round pick of the St. Louis
Cardinals in the 2014 draft. Outfielder Austin Wilson, a 2010
Harvard-Westlake grad who played in the 2009 PG All-American Classic,
was a second-round pick of the Mariners in 2013 after spending three
years at Stanford.
Harvard-Westlake
won the 2013 CIF Division-1 Southern Section championship under
LaCour’s direction, the first in school history, and was named high
school national champions by both Perfect Game and Baseball
America/BCA. LaCour directed the Wolverines to three straight Mission
League titles from 2011-13, the first three in program history.
Last
season, they finished 22-7-1 after losing in the second-round of the
CIF Division-1 Southern Section playoffs; they were runner-up in the
Mission League. The Wolverines left Georgia with a 13-2 overall mark
(2-2 Mission League) heading into a non-league game against Simi
Valley on April 11.