- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,172,045
- Reaction score
- 59
You must be registered for see images attach
WILLARD–The Willard baseball program has been a winning machine, under Head Coach, Scott McGee. The Tigers will play in their 7th State Semifinal, in McGee’s 19th and final season, Friday night.
The bulk of their success, offensively, has come from a method that is “outdated” by today’s standards — ‘small ball.’
Rather than adapt to the modern obsession with analytics, that encourage swinging for the fences, instead, McGee’s philosphy is all about putting men on base with simple contact, then, in motion to disrupt opposing pitchers, and bring them home to generate runs.
It’s the way the game was played for 100+ years, then the steroids era of the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s brought about an obsession with power, and the horrible side effect of high strikeout rates, rather than reward hitters who could hit for average and score runs the “old fashioned” way.
“We just kinda have a style that we play and people kinda know how we play,” said Tigers Head Coach, Scott McGee. “But you still have to take advantage of it and still find ways to stop it.”
And that’s a hard thing to do when the Tigers are so fundamentally sound, especially, for a high school team.
“Getting on base, bunting for hits, getting infield singles, we just can’t have three up, three down, 8 pitch inning. We gotta make them work,” McGee said.
Since 2008, when McGee took over the program, Willard has won 10 district championships, going to its 7th State Final Four, and won its only two state championships this decade. Clearly, his tride and true formula works pretty well.
“The kids here trust me because of our success over the last 15 or so years. We’ve had teams that just stand up there and hit, this is the way I like to play, but you don’t always have it that way. The style we want to play predicates us to do those sorts of things, and constantly puts pressure on the opponent and if you looked at our stats you’d be really impressed with some of our batting averages from guys that don’t hit the ball that hard, but they do a lot of good things.”
If Willard hopes to clinch its 3rd State title, it’ll need to upset the defending Class 5 champ, Platte County, on Friday, to advance to the championship game, on Saturday.
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOLR - OzarksFirst.com.
Continue reading...
