Cronin headed to Myrtle Beach for baseball
DAILY FORUM FILE PHOTO
Maryville’s Jarret Cronin pitches in the first inning of the Spoofhounds’ 11-7 victory over Chillicothe during the 2015 season. Cronin went on to play at Indian Hills Community College and Kansas City (Kansas) Community College and is playing for the Myrtle Beach HammerHeads this summer.
Maryville alumnus Jarret Cronin, who most recently played at Kansas City (Kansas) Community College, will be taking the next step in his baseball career this summer.
Cronin, a 2015 MHS graduate, accepted an invitation to pitch for the Myrtle Beach HammerHeads out of the Carolina Shores Collegiate Baseball League.
Cronin said he was invited to the team through connections at Northwest Missouri State University.
“I know a couple Northwest baseball guys who played out there, and they recommended me,” he said.
Cronin knows Kevin Handzlik and Jay Hrdlicka, who have connections with the club. Cronin played with Handzlik, Hrdlicka, as well as Dane Appel, who will be a junior on the Bearcats next season, for the Omaha Filthballers summer club last summer.
Andrew Martinez, who committed to Northwest Missouri State for the 2017 season, but didn’t appear on the roster this season, is also a member of the HammerHeads. Rider Harris, Cronin’s roommate at KCKCC is the only other player traveling from Missouri to be with the team. Harris prepped at Blue Valley High School, the same high school as former Northwest quarterback Kyle Zimmerman.
Cronin said he is adjusting to the word-of-mouth style as far as putting teams together.
“Coaches know, at this point, whether or not you can play at each level,” Cronin said. “It’s a lot different than high school where you have to pay a certain amount for a spot and then they don’t really care about your ability. In college, if you can perform on the field, then you are going to get to go to some pretty cool places in the summer.”
Cronin, who hasn’t been to South Carolina before, said he considered traveling to upstate New York, as well as going back to Omaha to compete in the summer,
The beach atmosphere of Myrtle Beach proved to be too tempting, however.
“Beaches are cooler than New York,” he said.
The Carolina Shores Collegiate Baseball League was established in 2015 and is a five-team league. According to the league’s website, the league fee includes a one-month stay the Brunswick Plantation and Golf Resort.
“It’s really exciting,” Cronin said. “It’s cool to go new places. I’m really looking forward to the drive out there because I’ll get to see a part of the country that I’ve never seen. To keep playing is special. It’s something I really enjoy doing and not everyone gets to do it.”
The Hammerheads open play June 15 against Crescent Beach.
If Cronin wishes to continue his baseball career at the college level, he will have to do so at a four-year school. He has used up all his junior college eligibility after starting his career at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa in 2016 before transferring.
Cronin said there are a handful of schools he has been in contact with, but would not elaborate more.
He said he wants to make sure he works on the mental part of his game this summer.
“If you are mentally strong, you can go out there and compete every day,” he said. “You may not have your best stuff that day, but if you’re mentally strong, you can compete for your team and hopefully help your team win.”
Cronin pitched in 11 games and threw 11 1/3 innings for the Blue Devils last season, in which he tallied 10 strikeouts.
KCKCC pitching coach Lendsey Thomson said Cronin didn’t get as much mound time as he probably deserved, due to a stacked pitching staff, but he said Cronin took it in stride.
“Jarret is very coachable,” Thomson said. “He just wanted the ball. He didn’t care whether he threw one pitch or one inning, and that’s rare in today’s athlete. Some guys only want to start or come out of the bullpen, or whatever. Jarret wasn’t like that. He bought into whatever we asked him to do.”
Another part of buying in included changing his delivery.
Cronin had always pitched over the shoulder like most pitchers, but when he joined the Blue Devils, he worked with the coaching staff to become a sidearm pitcher.
Thomson said there were a few bumps in the road early as he lost some of his velocity, but that Cronin soon developed into an effective sidearmer that helped his team get out of jams.
“Jarret became sort of an emergency valve for us,” Thomson said. “We’d bring him in the game whenever who was on the mound before him got into trouble. We trusted him to get us out of those jams.”
Cronin said still he remembers his final year playing baseball at Maryville.
The Spoofhounds made the district finals that year, falling 2-1 in nine innings against Benton.
“That group of seniors, we had played together for our whole lives and it made it a really special time and a great experience. We had known each other since we were five years old. They all went their separate ways after that, so it was cool to be a part of that last season.”
One of his classmates, Jacob Cacek, played on Northwest’s football team, but decided to leave the team after his sophomore season. Another, Mitchell Worthington is on Northwest’s baseball team.
