Greater Beckley Christian emerges as new baseball contender in Class A

PROSPERITY, W.Va. — Greater Beckley Christian has quickly positioned itself as a Class A baseball state tournament contender in its third year as a program.

The Crusaders, who finished just a game shy of the state tournament last year, catapulted up to Class A No. 5 in this week’s MetroNews statewide baseball poll after a 4-0 start and 4-1 win over 2014 champion and 2015 runner-up Man.

“They feel like they have arrived and are getting a little bit of respect that they’ve wanted from last year to this year,” said head coach Chris Walls of the ranking. “I’m glad to see that they’re getting that respect, but I hope they don’t read too much into it. Now that they’re getting noticed, I just hope it makes them want to work a whole lot harder.”

GBC won just three games during its inaugural season in 2014, but bounced back with 24 wins a year ago, falling to Man 5-4 in the regional final.

“That regional championship game last year was one of the best games that I’ve ever been involved with,” Walls said. “That game left a bad taste in our mouths last year and after it was over with, we felt like we let one get away. We had an eight player nucleus that decided they wanted to work all summer, all fall and all winter. That’s one of the keys to why we’re playing so well this early, because they really haven’t stopped.”

Greater Beckley Christian had been toying with the idea of putting a baseball team together for several years prior to that debut 2014 season. School administrators reached out to Walls to become the program’s first head coach as he brought with him a years of experience from coaching tenures at Independence, Oak Hill, Liberty (R) and Fayetteville.

Greater Beckley Christian is one of many West Virginia teams participating in tournaments out of Myrtle Beach this week.
Greater Beckley Christian is one of many West Virginia teams participating in tournaments out of Myrtle Beach this week.

Three seniors, two juniors, three sophomores and three freshmen make up Greater Beckley Christian’s roster. But it’s an athletic and talented group that is still loaded with pitching, despite just the 11-man roster.

“Our biggest strength is our pitching,” Walls said. “We’ve got seven kids out of the 11 who I consider pretty decent starters and actually two more kids who could come in and chew middle innings up.”

Junior Brett Green, senior Tanner Ray, sophomore Cole Kipps and junior Wil Mullins have all had early season success on the mound. Green, Ray and Kipps entered the week with 33 combined strikeouts over 18 innings pitched.

At the plate, Ray entered the week hitting .651, Noah Miller and freshman Garrett Matherly were both around .500 and Green had been highly productive driving in runs as well.

“Tanner (Ray) is really just exploding the ball off of the bat right now and putting it in play,” Walls said. “It’s still early, but we have been hitting the ball really well and putting the ball in play.

“The bottom part of our order is struggling a little bit – they’re putting the ball in play, but we’re not just aggressively going after the ball right now, we’re just swinging to make contact,” he continued. “That’s one of the things we need to work on.”

Greater Beckley Christian has been playing this week in Myrtle Beach and will come home for a schedule that includes challenging matchups against Class AA Bluefield, No. 10 Man again, No. 1 and defending state champion Wahama and two games against No. 7 Buffalo.

“That’s what we wanted,” Walls said. “That was one of the things I think that hurt us last year. We wanted to beef the schedule up so that we would have some big games like that.

“Whether you win them or lose them, it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “You’re seeing good pitching and good talent. When it comes tournament time, you won’t be overwhelmed by a good stiff arm or someone coming in with a really good record – we won’t be wowed by it.”





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