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SARASOTA - In 2012 and 2013, the Venice High baseball team was invited to the prestigious National High School Invitational tournament. One year, Craig Faulkner’s club finished 3-1, the next, 1-3. Both times Venice returned from the tourney and won an FHSAA state baseball title.
As it is every year, that will be the goal of the green and white when it begins district play Tuesday night by hosting North Port. But this year, Venice will begin its quest with a national championship in its back pocket.
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Invited to the 16-team tournament in Cary, N.C., for the first time since 2013, Venice ran the table, defeating all four opponents, one of the victories over Corona, Calif., the top-ranked team in the nation. In the title tilt, Venice got the game-winning hit from Carter Cox to defeat Jacksonville’s Trinity Christian Academy, 3-2, to earn the championship trophy.
Venice scored 15 runs in its four victories, but six pitchers combined to hold four of the country’s elite programs to just four runs. Sophomore pitcher Kasen Poplin didn’t allow a run in Venice's 5-0 win over Corona, and against Trinity Christian Academy, freshman Kohen Poplin hurled 4.2 hitless innings.
“Our defense was off the charts,” Faulkner said, “and our pitching was really good. We have a way every year of trying to get to the point where we are playing our best (at the end of the year), and our stuff is working, and we work hard to make sure we know all our bunts and pick (plays) and all the timing is right.”
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One aspect of the tournament play that surprised Faulkner was how no other team used bunt plays or knew where to throw the ball when an opponent laid down a bunt.
“They were just fielding the bunt and getting the out,” he said.
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Faulkner said his team has six bunt plays, and in the title game, with Trinity Christian runners on first and second base, one such play enabled Venice to field the bunt and get the runner out at third.
The tournament attracted more than 100 college and professional scouts, and more than a few liked what they saw from the team in green and white.
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“It was pretty neat to hear the comments from the scouts saying that Venice really plays the game the right way,” Faulkner said, “and how they’re good to watch. You go out to a tournament like this, and you hope to go 2-2. You hope you don’t get skunked, go 0-4, because that can easily happen, and it happened to some really good teams.
“We were fortunate to have won it. But we played well enough to win. No one gave us any of those games. We came from behind, we threw a lot of strikes, and we walked very few guys. Won two of those on come-from-behind in extra innings.”
The biggest thing Faulkner believes his team can extract from the tournament victory is knowing how to play under pressure.
“Tournament time is pressure, he said. "You are one-and-done sometimes; it’s your last game, and you go home, and that’s the same feeling you get in that tournament. You lose a game, and you’re not winning the tournament, so that pressure that was created there helps us. The more times you’re in that kind of atmosphere, the better you are.
“The expectations are to do very well in the playoffs. However, it doesn’t always work that way. We know that, so our goal as coaches is to make sure these guys are switching gears. Being national tournament champions . . . to, hey, we’ve got to win a district here. That’s behind us. Get our minds focused on what we have coming, and not what we’ve done.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Venice baseball wins national title, now prepares for run at state crown
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