ZooKeepers gave it a run

ASHEBORO — Baseball seasons are going to have ups and downs, highs and lows, and whichever teams come out of a season with just a few more highs than lows and a few more ups than downs are usually the ones celebrating at season’s end.

The Asheboro ZooKeepers had plenty of ups at the beginning of the Coastal Plain League season this summer. There were impressive individual performances, winning streaks, a high octane offense that was eminent after an 11-1 win over Boone in the season opener on May 28, strong defensive efforts and a managerial change that occurred early in the season that did not have a negative effect on the squad.

A great start, but a rough finish and that was the reason the ZooKeepers finished in third place in the West Division after holding first place pretty much the whole summer.

Asheboro did qualify for the CPL postseason for the first time since 2016, but the same deficiencies that plagued the team the final week of the regular season cost the team in a 3-2 setback to Forest City in the first-round one-game playoff.

The last time Asheboro did qualify for the playoffs, it dropped a first-round game to the Savannah Bananas, 3-2.

The managerial change came just six games into the season when Jamey May was elevated from assistant coach to manager.

“I didn’t expect that to be the case,” May said on the departure of Mark Weidemaier. “I was used to being a head coach, so I wasn’t overwhelmed.

I was surrounded by two good assistant coaches and a great front office.”

May is the Asheboro High School varsity baseball coach who coached in the Old North State League last summer.

“It’s a lot of games.” May said of the 49 total games the ZooKeepers played. “I was used to playing 24 games in high school last year and in the Old North State League, we played 30. I’m used to coaching 15-, 16-, and 17-year olds. A lot of these players were older guys. I had some 25-year olds. These guys are grown men and managing grown men is different than teenagers.”

The ZooKeepers were sailing along in the regular season, starting 6-0 and then played right around the .500 mark until July 5 when the ZooKeepers went on a streak that saw them win nine of 11 games to improve to 27-14.

“We were hot offensively and then we were figuring out our rotation and we got hot, won some games,” May said. “I think we knew who our hitters were and we were figuring out our rotation.”

But Asheboro struggled down the stretch of the regular season, losing six in a row before closing the regular season with a win over High Point-Thomasville. Among those six straight losses were three one-run setbacks to Forest City.

In fact, in one-run games this summer, Asheboro started out 4-1 at the beginning of the season, but lost their last seven one-run games of the season, including the 3-2 playoff setback to Forest City.

“We relied on our hitting too much,” May said. “We talked about how we can’t always count on our hitters to score nine, 10, 11 runs a game. It was going to turn around. There were a lot of positives that came out of those close losses. We kept teams to three or four runs and just couldn’t get the big hit.”

The final stats offensively for the ZooKeepers were impressive. Asheboro was first in the CPL in RBIs (358) and triples (17), second in runs scored (404), doubles (97) and on-base percentage (.431) and third in batting average (.297), total hits (465), total bases (734), slugging percentage (.468) and OPS (.899).

“Skye [Bolt, hitting coach] did a great job with the hitters,” May said. “He had a good, personal relationship with a lot of the guys and he was really good at reading people. He was very important in that respect, knowing the guys who needed a break.”

The end of the season came when Forest City scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning off a single, a bunt and a throwing error.

“It was tough to go out that way, but they showed a lot of fight,” May said. “They cared. There were a lot of tears and a lot of hugs. They wanted to win. It’s tough when you have a great group and it ends like that.”

No one could argue with the type of players General Manager Kory Dunbar, the front office staff and the coaches brought to Asheboro for the summer.

“First class kids,” May said. “It was an absolute pleasure to coach these kids.

“The kids we had were awesome. When you have kids that want to work and want to get better … They are always asking what they have to do to get an edge.”