VarsityXtra

The Tempe McClintock baseball team had quite the memorable postseason run last season, knocking off four-time defending champion Scottsdale Chaparral in the semifinals and then capturing the title in a thrilling extra inning affair against Tucson Sahuaro.

The heart and soul of that team was Jimmy Patterson. He was the Tribune’s 4A Player of the Year, and a home run against Sahuaro singlehandedly kept McClintock’s season alive. He was sandwiched around Dan Milner and Xorge Carrillo in the offense, and the trio combined for more than 50 percent of the team’s offense.

All three graduated, so it went without saying that the Chargers would be a much different team this year. Coach Harold Bull has counted on production from up and down the lineup this season to stay competitive. With a pair of wins this week over Paradise Valley, McClintock is 13-9 overall and 4-2 in region.

“We had those talks,” Bull said. “We couldn’t sit back and wait for those guys to knock some people around, hit the ball out of the ballpark. We have to be a different team. Don’t take anything away from what we did (last year), but if we were going to be a good team we had to redefine ourselves. And we’ve been doing it.”

Bull said the earlygoing was tough, when his team started 7-7 and usually got the best from teams gunning for the defending champion. McClintock has won six of eight games since, although there haven’t been any drastic changes on the diamond.

“What do you say to a team when you’re getting base hits, getting on base, doing all your homework, and we just didn’t finish it off?” Bull said. “You just practice on finishing off, then you do it. You just have to stay with it, keep doing what you’re doing. Once somebody does it, the gates will open up.”

McClintock is in the thick of the race for second place in the Desert Sky Region with Cave Creek Cactus Shadows and Scottsdale Saguaro. Last year, the Chargers won the 4A-I state tournament as the sixth seed.

This year, Bull simply wants to see his team make it there again.

“Then,” he said, “we’ll see what happens.”

Recruiting Web sites Rivals.com and Scout.com have reported that Apache Junction running back Shane McCullen has received a scholarship offer from Army. I bring this up to further prove the point that if a kid is talented enough, colleges will find him.

Since the beginning of time, it seems, high school parents have constantly blamed coaches for not doing enough to get their kid recruited. But with the age of the internet, club ball and various football camps, it’s almost impossible for a player nowadays to be overlooked.

Apache Junction was a pretty good football team last year, but there isn’t a revolving door in which college coaches are using to come see its program. However, McCullen is a special athlete and, not surprisingly, the kid with Division I talent was found by a Division I school.

There will always be kids that don’t make it to a big-time college program that might deserve to be there (Davidson basketball player Stephen Curry immediately comes to mind), but it’s usually because of certain reservations from coaches (whether the player is too small, too slow, etc.), not because they simply were never found.

Sometimes, parents just need to deal with the fact that their kid isn’t the next Brett Favre.

I talked to acting Chaparral Athletic Director Corey Newland on Monday, and he said he will be interviewing 6-10 candidates for the vacant boys basketball job in the next two weeks.

With open gyms starting up and summer ball right around the corner, he would like to get a coach in place by the third week of April. Steve Cervantez resigned as coach after this season.

In other Chaparral news, Anton Nowak will not return as Athletic Director this school year as he continues to battle an undetermined illness. He took a leave in December. Newland said he would like to see Nowak back in the fall, but at this point it is uncertain whether or not he will be back.