Experienced Valley baseball team ready to bloom

By: Jerin Steele
Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 8:06 PM

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It’s a season that Valley baseball coach Jim Basilone and his players have been building for.

A team that was once made up of mainly freshmen and sophomores has grown into an experienced group.

With eight starters returning to forge a deep lineup and pitching staff, the Vikings have visions of winning a Section 3-3A championship.

“It’s nice to have a team that you’ve tried to develop for many years,” Basilone said. “You planted the seeds back then. People couldn’t really understand why I was playing them when they were so young. We got pushed around a little bit, but now it’s time for the flower to bloom.”

The Vikings’ quest for a section title started with a two-game series split with Burrell this week.

They showed flashes of what they could become in the second half of last season, winning five in a row to get into the playoffs.

Valley beat Burrell in a play-in game before falling to eventual state champ Riverside in the first round.

Tyler Danko, Niko Heakins, Jacob Staraniec, Wesley Schrock, Conrad Hoover, Alex Vagnier, Dante Taliani and Collin School are the returning starters.

Each of them can pitch, and a couple of promising freshmen, Julian Danko and Dominick Dunkel, also pitch, giving Basilone plenty of options.

The Vikings can play matchups on the mound with four left-handers on their staff.

Basilone credited his two freshmen, Julian Danko and Dunkel, with having an advanced knowledge of the game for their age thanks to playing plenty of travel ball before entering high school.

Tyler Danko, Staraniec, Schrock, Hoover and Taliani are the heart of the lineup. Heakins is a table setter at the top of the lineup.

With the amount of experience returning, Basilone has the Vikings dialing in on the finer points to round them out.

That starts with focusing on mentality. Not so much on tactics or situational awareness, which Basilone loves about his group, but more with facing adversity and shaking off moments that don’t go as planned.

“My entire coaching staff and I have researched and pulled different things together, and we kind of have a classroom talk for 15 minutes every practice on the mental side of the game,” Basilone said. “How to approach things in a manner of calmness, taking a deep breath and not going off on a tangent when things go sour. The kids have bought into it, and it’s helped them in a lot of ways.”

Basilone has been working with each of them for multiple seasons.

Another area the Vikings have been developing is cohesiveness, and that has gone well.

For example, Tyler Danko, Taliani and Mason Simmons all play on the Burrell co-op hockey team, so when they had a game, Basilone would end winter workouts early, so the rest of the group could attend their games and support them.

They did the same thing with Staraniec at Valley basketball games.

“Not that it wasn’t like this in the past, but I feel we’re more bonded in terms of the kids hanging out together and doing things together like going to the hockey games,” Basilone said. “Our whole staff went, and the kids went, too. It was fun to support them, and that means a lot to the players when you support them when they are playing other sports.”

Jerin Steele is a freelance writer

Tags: Valley