Cats' Ray extends career with Cougars

By Marty Kirkland

For Nick Ray, earning a spot in Cleveland State’s baseball program was easy as 1-2-3.

Strikeouts, that is.

A 5-foot-9-inch, 145-pound right-hander who saw at least a shade of varsity time for Dalton High each of the past four seasons, Ray was tipped off by one of his personal pitching coaches, Johnny Dean, about a tryout at the community college just over the Tennessee border.

While position players went through several tests, Ray had a smaller window of opportunity but made the best of it by striking out the three batters he faced.

“Most of them I didn’t even really get high in the pitch count,” Ray said. “I had one who fouled off back to the catcher, other than that they swung through them. I mixed them up. I mix everything a lot.”

At the end of the tryout, Cougars coaches told Ray — who said he “felt good” on his walk back to the dugout — they’d be in touch to see what type of scholarship they could offer him, and he left feeling confident that call would come. A few days later it did.

Now, having signed a partial athletic scholarship with the team, which plays in the Tennessee Junior College Athletic Association, Ray is intent on maximizing his chances to continue developing as a pitcher.

Although he occupied a relief role most of this season, Ray picked up four wins with no losses in 29 2/3 innings of work, compiling a 3.30 ERA, striking out 31 and walking 13 while allowing 36 hits. While his location and offspeed pitches — Ray throws both a curve and a split-finger, which he considers his “out pitch” — showed improvement in his senior season, Ray said he didn’t perform as well as he would have liked.

“I could have done a lot better personally,” Ray said. “I’m pitching a lot better this summer (with the Boynton Bulldogs travel team) and I’ve been working pretty hard on my stuff. It’s getting better now. I just wish I would have done a lot better during the season.”

Still, Ray added depth to a talented pitching staff that also included Colton Kinnamon (8-2), Alex Roberts (5-2) and John Erwin (5-0). He believes that experience was good for all of them.

“It helped a lot,” he said, “just because everybody worked each other harder and just for the fact that we were all out there together and we did a lot of groups together.”

Dalton’s arms were a major part of the team’s run to a perfect record in Region 7-4A play and a sweep of the championship series, Cats coach Bobby Brotherton said.

“Those guys went out there on a day-to-day basis and were just workhorses,” he said. “They came out and did their job, most of the time, and were able to get people out, able to get ground balls. We didn’t make a lot of errors throughout the season ... so they were good for our confidence.

“Our guys knew if we scored a few runs, they could hold the opposition’s run production down. And I think they just fed off each other, the pitchers and hitters.”

Ray has played baseball since he was 4 years old and the pitcher was a tee. He began pitching at age 9 and switched to that position exclusively in high school, started lifting weights seriously and took lessons from private pitching coaches who helped him fine-tune his mechanics. The mental part of pitching has been an on-the-job experience for Ray, but he believes his understanding is progressing quickly and is focusing on making his physical presence match it.

“I need to get a lot bigger,” said Ray, who includes running, swimming and lots of work with rubber resistance bands in his exercise regimen. “I’d like to add 20 pounds at least.”

Brotherton, who spoke highly of Cleveland State coach Mike Policastro’s ability to work players hard in preparation for the future, said Ray must learn to adjust to even better hitters and tougher situations in college baseball, but that he’s shown the ability to improve already.

“I’m excited he’s going to get the chance to go play,” Brotherton said. “ ... He’ll have to go in there and work hard, that’s a big thing, but between his junior and senior year, I thought he did a good job of that and a good job of controlling and being able to pitch at a higher level.”

Down the road, like all junior college athletes, Ray hopes to make the jump to a bigger four-year program.

But for now, he wants to be the best Cougar he can be.

“The oldest person on the team will be 19 or 20,” he said. “So we’re really all kind of on the same base levels. I’m just going to work as hard as I can to try and earn a starting position.”