Chris Margraf may have summed up the cancellation of the 2020 New England prep school baseball season best when he said "the opportunity to succeed and fail and to then succeed again as a team is what makes coaching at the secondary school level so special.''
Albeit, the only failure in this case was a pandemic, which nobody saw coming let alone understood. Margraf, the longtime Lawrence Academy coach, like every other prep and public school baseball coach and player across the nation, bore witness to his program becoming crippled once Covid-19 commenced its methodical spread across our country.
Now a year removed, and with everyone eager for a return back to some sort of normalcy, there is a fever in the air called spring fever. Along with it, the restoration of spring baseball. Prep programs have been out in force during these past few weeks practicing and preparing for a return to the hallowed baseball diamonds. From school to school, player to player and coach to coach, everyone is trying to put 2020 in the rearview and surge forward.
"We are excited to be back and playing regardless of the restrictions and the new normal we are all faced with,'' Roxbury Latin coach David Cataruzolo said. "From my perspective, this challenging time away has brought many of us a new appreciation for not only playing, coaching and learning the game, but being part of a team, competing and enjoying every moment of it. The game itself is often filled with such highs and lows, but I predict this season the highs will be higher and the the lows will be fewer, less drastic and easier to learn from.''
