Like many baseball teams in the Bay Area, Los Gatos spent a week away from home playing non-league teams.
But instead of taking on other opponents from the West Coast, the Wildcats traveled down to middle Tennessee, playing unfamiliar programs like Friendship Christian and Overton in a small town called Lebanon.
Located around 45 minutes east of the state capitol in Nashville and a world away from what the South Bay natives were used to, the teenagers grew to appreciate the state where coach Mike Minkel spent his college years.
“They saw a lot of respect for strangers and people you’ve never met before,” said Minkel, who went to Cumberland University in Lebanon. “A lot of time spent holding doors for people and going out of your way to be kind when you don’t have to be.”
Despite Minkel and his assistant coach, Eric Mull, graduating from the NAIA program more than a decade ago, they still have plenty of friends in the area, making it possible to plan games in Tennessee and put together sightseeing excursion with help from locals.
Through fundraising efforts since last summer, the team was able to make a long trip.
Los Gatos won all three games in the Volunteer state, including a 10-5 victory in Nashville over Mookie Betts’ alma mater Overton High.
They might have been 2,000 miles from temperate Los Gatos, but Brayden Smith and Lucas Carlisle led an offense that looked comfortable in the southeastern humidity. Each junior hit a home run against the Nashville powerhouse, which is 9-1 in league play.
The 18-3 Wildcats stayed focused between the lines, but their coaches made sure they also had fun on their trip.
With several of his players both avid country music and college baseball fans, they also enjoyed a day in the genre’s mecca and caught a Vanderbilt game too.
The Wildcats even got to see the South’s party bus and hot chicken epicenter of Broadway Street, albeit from a distance.
“They got to see what Broadway looked like at night,” Minkel said, who then laughed and added, “Although obviously, we all stayed in the car and drove them around, because there’s not much you can do walking around there at 16.”
But it wasn’t the baseball or the big events that the coach enjoyed the most – It was a quiet team BBQ on the Cumberland river.
“They’re out doing their thing, they’re engaged in nature and off of their phones,” Minkel remembered. “It was refreshing to see and be a part of it. It was an instance where I didn’t really want to leave there and do the next thing.”
He hoped that his team took a new appreciation for that region of the country, and the people who live there, back with them to the South Bay.
“You take all the politics out of everything, and when you come together and sit down, with us from California and them from Tennessee, we’re all just human beings who care about each other,” Minkel said.
