The Class of 2010: A roundtable discussion on their careers
May 23, 2010
- Front: Alex Tenckinck, Steve Durham, Chase Martin. Back: Jason Henrickson, Luke Stafford, Carter DeBoe, Andrew DeGood, Adam Koning, Todd Scholten, Evan Mudd
As the Hawkeye baseball program nears the end of the 2010 season, the careers of ten senior players is also drawing to an end. The staff of the website wanted to sit down with the seniors to capture their reflections on their baseball careers. Carter DeBoe, Andrew DeGood, Steve Durham, Jason Henrickson, Adam Koning, Chase Martin, Evan Mudd, Todd Scholten, Luke Stafford and Alex Tenckinck all shared their views on coming up through the baseball program.
The conversation was humorous, introspective, enlightening and revealing as the chemistry that this group has been known for came through like the sun on a South Carolina morning.
HHB: Who was the best player when you were in little league?
MUDD: Who was the best player?
KONING: I don’t know.
MUDD: We were all on different teams in little league so I think we all thought we were our team’s best player.
DEBOE: I wasn’t the best player on my team ever. I wasn’t that good. (Laughter explodes in the room)
DEGOOD: Probably Carter because he was one of the few lefties in the league.
KONING: I remember Carter would wear those red socks…
HHB: What’s up with the red socks?
DEBOE: I was on the Cream Chalet team and we were in all stars at the Dorr Tournament. Everyone had black socks on and I wore my red ones. I think I hit 14 home runs that tournament.
KONING: No you didn’t…
DEBOE: Yeah, I did.
HENRICKSON: Yeah Carter, there weren’t any fences.
HHB: So there was not a dominant player when you were growing up?
TENCKINCK: No.
MUDD: We didn’t think of it that way. We just played baseball.
HHB: What were some of the most memorable things that happened when you guys were playing baseball?
(Laughter erupts again in the room)
DEBOE: When we beat Dorr 43-0.
TENCKINCK: I wasn’t at that game. I got a message on my answering maching from Jason’s dad. I was like “What in the heck is this? 43-0.”
KONING: I hit a home run. I remember that.
SCHOLTEN: Jason and I hit a home run too.
HHB: Anything else besides the Dorr game?
HENRICKSON: I remember Stevie at the Allegan tournament when we were 12.
(Durham instantly smiles.)
DURHAM: I remember that because I had future Coach Behnke sitting in the crowd.
HHB: Which one of the senior players has changed the most since you were 10 years old and why?
EVERYONE EXCEPT KONING: Adam!
EVAN: Adam was a pudge.
KONING: Yeah, but I could still hit.
DEBOE: I’d say Adam because he’s nice now. He used to be a bully. (Smiles erupt around the room as Carter and Adam go back and forth)
TENCKINCK: Yeah, but Adam got a lot more athletic.
MUDD: Adam was still an athlete but he just got skinny.
- Youth All-Stars circled in the front: Alex Tenckinck, Jason Henrickson Back: Steve Durham, Andrew DeGood, Evan Mudd, Carter DeBoe, Adam Koning
HHB: If we’re talking about your freshman year in baseball, what memories do you have that you immediately think of?
SCHOLTEN: “Sprint.”
TENCKINCK: At Holland, we’re taking infield and Coach Myers couldn’t hit a fungo at all.
KONING: He struck himself out three times.
DEBOE: It was probably ten times in a row. Their whole dugout was laughing. And we were laughing.
TENCKINCK: His steal sign was this. (Alex points at the runner and then to the base he should steal.)
MUDD: Yeah, he practiced the fungo after that.
DEBOE: I remember the first week of practice, we sprinted so much.
SCHOLTEN: I sat there and watched. (Todd had broken his ankle on a snowmobile right before the season).
STAFFORD: Coach Myers made us run sprints at the beginning of practice.
MARTIN: And he made us carry a big water jug to practice at the bus garage field. But he never let us drink any!
DEGOOD: He made us do a lot of crazy drills too.
TENCKINCK: Evan and I were taking BP in the outfield and Coach Burton was throwing. And I lined one right off of his forehead. We were all freaked out. We said, “Dude, are you all right?” He was like, “Yeah, it’s just my head.”
(Laughter Erupts Again)
DEBOE: It bounced 40 feet off of his head.
TENCKINCK: We hit him five times in a row.
HHB: A lot has been written about the multi-sport athletes. Why do you think that is not the norm at other schools?
MUDD: I think there’s more of a push towards being a star.
DURHAM: We are, by all of our coaches, encouraged to play a sport every season.
MUDD: It’s not only our coaches but also our parents. They have a lot to do with that too.
TENCKINCK: Our group of kids is pretty tight too so we do sports for each other.
HHB: Do you see the one-sport athlete becoming the trend?
KONING: At Hamilton, I think it is going to stay the trend to play multiple sports.
DEBOE: I thought I would be a one-sport athlete but was convinced that wasn’t the way to go.
HHB: Did any of you have that one moment where you thought “I belong and I can play at this level (varsity)?”
TENCKINCK: The Holland Christian game last year when we had a doubleheader against them. I had to get an out with the bases loaded. I got the save and I pitched the next game and we won that too.
MUDD: It was against Wayland my sophomore year. I pitched the best I ever have. It was a couple of games before districts and that was when I finally felt like I belonged here.
DURHAM: I would probably say the 2009 Coldwater Tournament when I came in to relieve Carter…
DEBOE: Thanks Steve.
DURHAM: That was the one pitching performance where I was like “If I keep working at it, I can perform well at this level.”
SCHOLTEN: It was the first day (2009) when everyone started razzing me. I just thought I belonged with these guys.”
DEBOE: Really?
Laughter fills the room again.
DEBOE: It didn’t happen in my sophomore year. I had a rough season. It was the season opener in 2009 against Middleville. I went four for four and hit a home run to tie the game in the last inning.
HENRICKSON: It was my sophomore year when I had two walk-off hits versus Caledonia and Rogers.
DEBOE: It wasn’t the foul ball home run you hit at FH Northern?
HENRICKSON (Shaking his head): Shut up Carter…
HHB: That was foul…
KONING: I think it was when I wasn’t going to play infield. The summer before I started playing outfield at Midland. I was like, “Dang, I can do this.”
MUDD: I remember when you made that catch against Middleville (2009). I was like, “That’s in the gap” and then Adam came out of nowhere to run it down.
DEBOE: I was like, “Yeah, Good Job.”
Carter’s sense of humor is starting to dominate the conversation.
HHB: What are your best memories of the Spring Break trips?
DURHAM: The game we played “Where in the heck is Rudy on the island?” With a certain team ending up on a golf course and needing to be saved.
STAFFORD: Playing three-on-three basketball with Corey Schrotenboer (Class of 2009) and a bunch of the guys.
TENCKINCK: I pretty much got laughed at for two years.
KONING: When Alex had a bird drop his droppings on his hand at the Citadel game.
(Alex shakes his head as the rest of the guys roar)
DEBOE: What about the table that I broke?
MUDD: The swan dive on the table.
KONING: It was a backflip swan dive…
MUDD: and Coach DeGood didn’t find out until the end of the season.
HHB: Can you talk about Coach DeGood? Many of you have been around him since you started playing the game.
MUDD: I’ve been around him a long time. I learned he was more intense than I ever realized. I remember the first time he came to the mound when I was pitching. I started walking towards him and he yelled at me, “Stay on the mound, I will come to you.”
HENRICKSON: That was the first time? Not when you got chewed out in South Carolina? He got into you pretty good.
MUDD: It was Mike Norman. He threw me under the bus. I had a groundball on the third base line that was foul. I fielded it and didn’t throw it over to first. Coach came unglued. He asked me “Why aren’t you throwing that to first?” Then he asks Norman and he said it was fair. I was like…(Evan’s head just hangs and shakes from side to side)
DEBOE: We were playing and Adam was pitching. He was throwing strikes and not walking anybody. They were getting hits. Coach came out to the mound started getting into Adam. We were so surprised. When he left the mound, we started laughing.
KONING: I didn’t know what to say.
STAFFORD: He seems like a quiet guy but his intensity for the little things is important. He jokes around a lot more than you would think…
Although their careers are not completed, it was interesting to see this group reminisce about their baseball careers. Their humorous approach to this conversation was somewhat surprising and opposite of the way they play the game. And that’s the thing they will be remembered for the most.
-HAMILTON HAWKEYE BASEBALL WEBSITE STAFF
