2016 Perfect Game High School Preview Index
As a sophomore starter on a team challenging for a coveted state championship last spring, middle-infielder Mark Vierling felt not only on top of his game, but also on top of the world. He and his teammates at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, Mo., were steamrolling towards a Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) Class 5 title, and the young Vierling was looking very much at home, settled comfortably into his place in school history.
One of the main reasons that comfort zone existed was the presence of senior middle-infielder Matt Vierling, Mark’s older brother. Matt Vierling was the CBC Cadets’ best player – he led the team in hitting (.451., 3 HRs, 32 RBI, 31 R) and was among its winningest pitchers (8-0, 2.07 ERA). His hometown St. Louis Cardinals selected Matt Vierling in the 30th round of the 2015 MLB June Amateur Draft but he didn’t sign professionally, opting to honor his commitment to Notre Dame.
In the eyes of Mark Vierling, his older brother was much more than just a great ballplayer who was leading Christian Brothers College HS to its first state championship since 2010. Matt Vierling was a real-life big brother, the central figure in what had grown into a de facto band of brothers in the CBC dugout.
“Everyone was so close to each other and it was awesome. It was definitely the best baseball experience I’ve had,” Mark Vierling told Perfect Game when asked about the 2015 experience this week. “Playing alongside (Matt) was great, and at the end of the year he was playing short and I was playing second, and we made that (championship) run the whole time; it was awesome. He’s my role model and he’s who I look up to. I get all my advice from him.”
The older brother has moved on to South Bend, Ind., but the younger brother returns for his junior season at CBC, a campaign that percolates with promise. Although 12 seniors were lost to graduation from last year’s 32-7 team, a core group of at least six seniors return for seventh-year head coach Mason Horne this season. It’s a group Horne seems very comfortable with.
“Like everybody, I start with just looking for good players, the guys that have those physical tools,” Horne told PG this week. “I’m kind of an old-school, blue-collar guy so that’s the kind of players I like to be around. Past the physical tools, what we look for is guys that are just super passionate about the game, they’re passionate about getting better at the game every day through their work ethic. What I always say is I like Boy Scouts off the field and I like dirt-bags on the field.”
With its home in St. Louis, Christian Brothers College HS is part the Perfect Game High School Great Plains Region, a sprawling conglomerate of eight states that includes all of the baseball-playing high schools in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
No. 19 Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colo. and No. 35 St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kan., are the only two schools from the Great Plains included in PG’s Preseason National High School Top 50 Rankings. But the schools from the St. Louis and Kansas City (both Missouri and Kansas) areas are as traditionally strong as any in the country.
St. Louis-area schools like CBC, Francis Howell, Westminster Christian, St. John Vianney and DeSmet Jesuit have been especially strong through the years. Westminster Christian won four straight MSHSAA Class 4 championships from 2011-14 and Howell won two Class 5 titles the last five seasons. Now it’s Christian Brothers College’s turn to defend a championship; it will do so humbly.
“One of the things we try to preach around the school – we have a lot of very successful programs here in all sports – is that old cliché that it’s not what you’ve done it’s what you do,” Horne said. “We take that same approach with baseball and from a head-coaching perspective I kind of preach that because I know how easy it is to get caught up in (past success).”
Almost every high school state champion soon learns that in the first weeks or even months after winning a title there is a little bit of a “honeymoon” period often followed closely by a bit of a “hangover.” The key for a coaching staff is to not let that honeymoon period linger too long, get through the hangover and then get right back to business. It’s the old “short memory” way of doing things.
“What we do here is try to put (the championship) on the mantle and when you’re out of high school and out of college talk it about all you want, but let’s move on,” Horne said.
At the same time, Horne knows there are positive momentum factors that can be taken from a championship season and carried into the next campaign. High school kids have a tendency to live off that momentum for too long and before anyone knows it, the young players are taking their opponents for granted – heck, they might even be taking the game for granted – and they’re getting beat.
“The momentum is definitely there, but in-house we try to really preach, ‘That chapter’s over, it’s time to move on; it’s a whole new year,’” Horne said. “Even if I had the same players returning every year, we still have to build chemistry for the new year. We try to turn the page. It was last year; it was exciting … but the word ‘repeat’ we don’t use around here. We don’t even say the word.”
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CHRISTIAN BROTHERS COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL’S HISTORY DATES BACK TO 1850 but it has occupied its current campus only since 2003. The all-male Catholic college preparatory school with an enrollment of right around 950 in grades 9-12 is a charter member of the five-team St. Louis-area Metro Catholic Conference (MCC) – commonly referred to as “The Big 5” – which was established in 1992. The league also includes DeSmet Jesuit, Vianney, Chaminade College Prep, and St. Louis University high schools.
In addition to winning a state championship in his first season in 2010, Horne led the Cadets to four MCC titles in his first six years on the job to go with a pair of Class 5 District 5 championships in 2010 and 2012. Ironically, they did not win a league or district title on their way to the 2015 state championship.
“We obviously have really good kids to start with, and we’re an all-boys school so it’s very competitive environment, not only from a sports standpoint but from an academic standpoint – you put a bunch of men in one building and it’s going to get competitive,” Horne said. “The culture here is, I’m not going to say ‘win’ because that’s probably the wrong word, but it is kind of the expectation around here,” This is how he further explained it:
“We have our gym – and there’s only one gym on campus – and in our gym there are all these championship banners. When kids walk out of here they will tell you, ‘That’s really all I was playing for, to get my team and my name in that gym’ because there is so much history in our gym.”
The baseball team that made their own history last year was led by departed seniors Matt Vierling, outfielder Shane Melbrod (Xavier U.), outfielder Stephen Melbrod (Xavier U.) and catcher Mike Million.
The baseball team that will try to make more history this spring will take their cue from a group of seniors led by outfielder/right-handed pitcher Blake Charlton (top-500 nationally, Missouri signee); catcher Donovan Psaris (t-1,000, Lindenwood); right-hander/outfielder Alec Whaley (high follow, Murray State), outfielder/right-hander Roy Moore (HF, NW Missouri State) and infielder Dan Ampleman (So. Illinois U.-Edwardsville). Charlton is looking forward to a repeat of the 2015 season.
“We played pretty well all last season and then the pitching and the defense all picked up in the playoffs,” Charlton said. “There couldn’t have been a better time to click and get everything going into the playoffs. We can definitely carry over the experience (we gained). Not everyone has been there before but for those of us who have been there before we can lead by example and help out the other people who haven’t been.”
The 6-foot-4, 205-pound Charlton will be remembered as one of the finest baseball/football athletes to come out of Christian Brothers in some time, mostly because of all the winning he’s done just in the last two school years.
He quarterbacked the Cadets to an MSHSAA Class 6 state championship and a 14-0 record as a junior; he was 17-for-22 for 220 yards and three TDs in a 31-24 championship game victory over Rockhurst. This past fall he again led CBC to the Class 6 state championship game – it lost to Blue Springs South, 37-28 – and earned Second-Team All-State recognition from the Missouri Football Coaches Association. He completed 72 percent of his passes (170-for-235) for 3,009 yards and 33 touchdowns as a senior.
As a junior last spring, Charlton also helped lead the charge to the MSHSAA Class 5 state baseball championship. He was the winning pitcher in both the Cadets’ quarterfinal game (5-0 over Howell Central) and championship game (17-5 over Staley) victories and finished the season 8-0 with a 1.60 ERA and 69 strikeouts in 43 2/3 innings pitched; hit .300 with two home runs, 29 RBI and 23 runs scored.
“What makes him really special is that he has a very ‘go-with-the-flow’ type of attitude,” Horne said. “He never gets too high, he never gets too low, and so he’s the perfect leader. … You put him on the mound in the state championship game and to him he’s the voice of calm; his body language is just very, very relaxed in big moments. … I think the other guys feed off that, especially in those pressure moments.”
For his part, Charlton felt like he benefitted greatly from being able to compete for Missouri state championships in two of the state’s most high-profile sports.
“Playing in the football championship before (the baseball season) gave me the experience so that I wasn’t as nervous as maybe someone else would be that hadn’t been in that (championship game) situation,” he said. “I was thankful for the opportunity, and I love playing against the best and being able to beat the best.”
In addition to the seniors, the Cadets’ lineup will be bolstered by the return of Mark Vierling (.431, 11 RBI, 3@ R), a Missouri commit ranked No. 462 nationally, along with fellow junior Jacob Hausman, a top-500 national prospect who has committed to Missouri State. With the departure of so many seniors from a year ago, it’s going to be all hands on deck when it comes to filling the available holes.
“We’re going to have to (defer to the seniors) a little bit but me and Jake Hausman are also going to have to lead a little bit, too, because we have other juniors coming up,” Vierling said. “We’ve got a couple of other (sophomores) coming up, too, and since we have experience we need to show them what’s it’s like and help to get them through.”
The guys coming back will definitely provide the backbone of the Cadets’ lineup but Horne said the “fun part” of the preseason is welcoming in all the players that have been in the program but are yet to contribute on the varsity level. This promises to be a season where a lot of players will be coming of age.
“One of our mottos here at the school is, ‘Men for tomorrow, brothers for life,’ and that’s kind of what we envision this season to be like,” he said. “Even though the season is only 2½ months long it is amazing how fast they grow up from a baseball-savvy standpoint.”
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CHRISTIAN BROTHERS COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC TEAMS HAVE WON MISSOURI state championships in at least 11 sports during this century and last, with the ice hockey program being the most dominant. The MSHSAA does not sanction hockey but as a member of the Mid-States Club Hockey Association, Cadets teams have won 15 state titles (including this winter’s) and 11 since 2001; the CBC skaters won 130 straight games between the start of the 2002-03 season and the completion of the 2005-06 campaign
Eight MSHAA state soccer titles been claimed, along with five in basketball (the most recent in 2014). Since 2001, the school has won four in-line hockey champions, two lacrosse titles and one state football championship (2014) to go with the two baseball titles (2010, 2015).
Always recognized nationally for its academic prowess, Christian Brothers is emerging as a top sports institution, as well: “You may not realize it when you first look in here,” CBC athletics director Rocky Streb told STLhighschoolsports.com after the St. Louis-based Website named Christian Brothers its Large School Program of the Year for the 2014-15 school year. “It looks like a bunch of kids that are just interested in studying, but they can play.”
The Cadets’ are ready to set out and once again show everyone in the “Show-Me State” just how well they can play the game of baseball. Charlton will be a baseball-only guy once he gets to Columbia and he admits that he’s going to miss playing football, but he also admitted it didn’t take him long to realize he’d have a brighter future on the diamond than on the gridiron. Now he’s ready to go after another state championship: “You never know what’s going to happen but you can always work towards it,” he said. “Hopefully everyone’s on board and working towards the same goal that I am.”
He can count on Vierling: “With this baseball program, every single year we have high expectations. We expect to go far every year and it’s really special to be a part of it. In my opinion, it’s the best high school baseball school in the state and probably one of the best in the Midwest.”
Vierling will have to pursue those goals without his older brother at his side this spring, but they’ve always been their own men, anyway. Other than an extremely competitive spirit they both share, Horne described Matt and Mark Vierling as polar opposites. Younger brother Mark tends to play with his emotions on his sleeve while older brother Matt was much more calm, cool and collected. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong it’s just kind of the “whatever works for you” approach.
And now, Mark Vierling is ready to work with a whole new group of seniors: “I’ve been with this group ever since my freshman year so I know these guys really well,” he said. “We feel like a family and I’ve idolized them for a quite a while; it’s always fun to be with them.”
Head coach Mason Horne is completely onboard with everything his start junior middle-infielder has to say, with the exception of the “expectation” part. He called it a “dirty word” – right there alongside “repeat” – and used it reluctantly while answering a final question put forth by PG.
“Our expectations here at CBC and within the baseball program every year are to be competing for the state championship,” Horne said. “The goal is to be playing in that game so every year we walk in with that mentality. My expectations for this team is that we’re going to really go out and we’re going to pitch it well and we’re going to compete.
“The biggest question mark for us is to figure out what our identity is offensively; we’ve to some good talent it’s just a matter of finding the right mix. But the expectations don’t change: every year it’s the state championship game or bust.”