William Monroe’s junior varsity boys relish winning season

Ask Monroe junior varsity baseball head coach Greg Breeden what helped propel his young team to its number one spot in the Jefferson District this season, and he’ll share a moment.
“We were playing a team called Broadway earlier in the year, and we had some players that were kind of losing focus on playing the game itself,“ Breeden begins. “Coach Cory Eppard and I took them into the locker room, and we had a ‘little sit down talk.‘“ He smiles. “I challenged each individual to give it their best as a team. They took it as a challenge. From then, we went on to win 9 out of our next 11 ball games.“
  In fact, the impressive jv team ended with a 14-6 record overall and a 9-3 record in the district. In the championship game on May 21, the team beat Orange by a score of 4-1.
“We were very blessed with the ball team we had this year,“ says Breeden.  He has plenty of other good things to say about his jv boys this year.
“Our team came with a lot of good ball players through coaches from the youth league and traveling ball teams. We had a lot of ball players who could play different positions,“ he explains. “As the year went on, some ball players were asked to play positions that they would not normally (be assigned), and they responded very well.“
His pitchers had an earn run average of 3 runs a ball game, plus: “We were a very good defensive ball team,“ he says. “Out of a total of 570 chances, we made 33 errors, so that made a fielding percentage of .950. We also had eight ball players that had an on-base percentage of over .500.
Breeden said that as he and Eppard coached baseball, they tried to teach players life lessons in the process, such as how to survive failures.
  “We’d tell them, ‘Get up, get stronger and learn from your mistakes.‘  We taught them that baseball is a lot like life—the harder you work at it the more you get out of it. And they understood that.“
Breeden said he is thankful for being allowed the chance to coach at the high school and that he appreciates the support of the parents as well.
Breeden has been coaching ever since he graduated from William Monroe High School, particularly youth league and travel ball teams.
“I love to coach,“ he says.  “And coaching at the high school has been a life long dream of mine.“