Diamond Classic Baseball Tournament Helps Two Clearwater Teams Prepare for the Regular Season

With basketball and soccer playoffs in full swing throughout the area, and the weather of late leaning more towards nor’ eastern than true southern, it’s difficult to remember that spring is right around the corner.

But this weekend, at Clearwater Central Catholic’s Marauders Field, it got a little easier to imagine days full of warm temperatures, green grass and watching games played on a diamond, not a court or a field.

The Diamond Classic preseason tournament is the brainchild of longtime CCC Coach Todd Vaughan. He came up with the idea about a decade ago as a way for area teams to prepare for the upcoming baseball season.

 “I’ve always just kind of set it up that we just had a set schedule, never ‘winners win (and advance), losers lose’ (and go home), so everybody would know what they’re doing,” Vaughan said after Saturday’s game.  “Four teams…just get out and play, see what we got and what we’re going to have to work on going into the season.”

Unfortunately this year two teams backed out, leaving just the Marauders and the Clearwater High Tornadoes in the field.

“It still worked out, we still got our two games in,” an undaunted Vaughan said.

In the first game of the series Friday night, Clearwater won 5-3 on the strength of a two run homer by freshman outfielder Dillon Stone and solid pitching by senior Tyler O’Brien, who allowed just a pair of runs over four innings.

“We’re probably 90% pleased with (the way we played) last night,” Tornadoes Coach Ken Clawson said following Saturday’s game. “Right now we’re banged up a little bit, plus basketball, we’re missing three starters. We’re going to be pretty solid when we throw strikes, and we’ll play hard every night.”

Saturday, on a glorious afternoon for baseball, senior Jeff Campbell threw three hitless innings and added a single and a double at the plate, freshman call-up Derek Gibree reached base twice in a seven-run fourth inning, and the Marauders earned a series split with a decisive 12-2 victory.

Despite splitting the shortened series and having two teams fail to show up, the event lived up to its purpose: to prepare the participating teams for the regular season.

 “We got good pitching last night, we got real good pitching again today, we played good defense both days, so I think we came out about like I was hoping that we would,” a satisfied Vaughan said when the tournament was over.

What's next:

• Clearwater kicks off its regular season schedule with a game against Berkeley Prep Wednesday night.
• CCC starts keeping track of the score when the Marauders take on Cardinal Mooney in the Baron Classic tournament hosted by St. Pete Catholic today.