Lee Boyd is fond of saying the New Hope High School baseball team always has to have one guy step up.
Will Godfrey took that notion to heart last week in one of the Trojans’ biggest moments of the season. Locked in a scoreless tie with Oxford in the bottom of the seventh inning in Game 2 of their Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 5A North State title series, Godfrey turned on a fastball middle in and smacked it over the left-field fence to lift New Hope to a 1-0 walk-off victory.
The win helped New Hope force a winner-take-all Game 3 in Oxford that originally was scheduled for Friday, but rain forced it to be delayed until Saturday. In Game 3, Oxford earned a 10-3 victory that ended New Hope’s season and its quest for a third-straight Class 5A championship.
Nearly four days after his first home run of the season, Godfrey was asked how the blast could help him build confidence as he prepares for his senior season. Fittingly, the right-handed hitting catcher praised the seniors on this season’s team and said he hopes he can follow their lead next season, when he is expected to be one of the leaders, especially in clutch situations like Thursday night.
“I didn’t feel as much pressure because I had those guys ahead of me who would take that off me,” said Godfrey, who is The Dispatch’s Prep Player of the Week. “I just performed without thinking too much about it. Next year, the difficult thing to do is to play without thinking as much.”
Godfrey related a conversation he had with senior first baseman Wells Davis after the final game of the season. He said Davis, who was a key part of the past two state title teams, told him he will feel like he has to step up next season and that he has to be careful not to put too much pressure on himself and to continue to work hard.
Godfrey can take lessons learned from this season to follow Davis’ plan. As a sophomore, Godfrey appeared in only 15 games. He scored 10 runs in spot duty as a pinch runner and had one hit in two at-bats. Entering this season, he figured he would play a bigger role and was ready. A fast start to the season boosted his confidence, but he said an 0-for-18 slump in April forced him to re-think his approach at the plate. He admitted he was putting too much pressure on himself and that he had to concentrate more on hitting the ball hard. The change in thinking helped him go 14-for-31 (.452) in his final 11 games. If you take out Game 2 against Neshoba Central and the two games against Pearl, Godfrey was 14-for-23 in one of the team’s toughest stretches of the season.
“Once the middle of the season hit, they were all expecting me to do,” Godfrey said. “I guess I just was thinking so hard about getting the job done because they expected it from me. Once I got out of that slump, I caught myself and realized I wasn’t thinking about anything other than hitting the ball hard or hitting it to the right side to get the run in. I wasn’t so much thinking about myself but thinking about the team. I couldn’t have done it without God.”
Boyd said Godfrey was a .250 hitter for most of the season before he “cranked it up” at the end. He said Godfrey had the biggest hits and was the team’s best hitter in the playoffs. The biggest hit of them all was the home run that set off a celebration before a packed house at Trojan Field.
“I bet I have watched it on YouTube about 50 times,” Boyd said. “It still gives me chill bumps.”
Godfrey’s surge helped him finish with a .293 batting average. He was second on the team with 27 hits and third on the team with 14 RBIs. He also had four doubles, one triple, and the home run. His .391 slugging percentage was fifth on the team and his .411 on-base percentage was fourth on the squad.
Defensively, he caught 8 of 24 runners stealing and had five errors and 12 passed balls for a .976 fielding percentage. New Hope had a 1.85 ERA with Godfrey as the primary catcher.
“I have high expectations for myself to have a big part on this team,” Godfrey said. “I expected myself to do those things. I expected to hit well and to get the team going.”
Godfrey admits he might have been too hard on himself in stretches and that he feels he could have done better in his first full varsity campaign. He knows he will have to take on a bigger role next season, but he also said younger players will have to take their game to the next level because he knows the seniors won’t be able to shoulder all of the burden.
But Godfrey also realizes one home run can’t change his outlook for next season. While it might raise his confidence that he will be able to handle the role of a senior, he knows he has to stay within his 5-foot-9, 150-pound frame and do what he can do to help lead the team back to the Class 5A North State title game.
“Wells said don’t put too much pressure on yourself because if you do that, bad things will happen (to you),” Godfrey said. “He said when it is meant to happen it will happen for you.”
It sounds like Godfrey knew what Davis was going to say because that’s the approach he took last week to hit the biggest home run of his career.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Godfrey said.
Boyd believes Godfrey is smart enough to know the home run against Oxford isn’t something that can change his makeup. He said Godfrey is a contact hitter who capitalizes on his speed and who likely won’t become a slugger between today and the start of the 2016 season. He said he will remind Godfrey there is no way he will be able to duplicate what he accomplished as a junior and that he has to rely on effort and attitude to help him have an even better senior season.
“Sometimes a home run can be the worst thing to happen to a hitter because then they feel like, ‘Hey, I am supposed to hit home runs,’ ” Boyd said. “He knows he is not a home-run hitter. I don’t remember a home run Will has hit in practice this year. If he ever starts to pull off the baseball like that, he is going to be a roll-over, ground-out-to-third-base kind of guy. We don’t want that. He knows he is kind of a line-drive hitter.
“I think Will knows his role. I don’t think that is going to play with his head as much as it would a bigger kid.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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