Gulf Coast Baseball Approaching Opening Weekend

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - The JUCO baseball season is literally knocking on the door as the Gulf Coast Commodores open up their season Friday, January 27th over in North Port, FL.

They will be squaring off with State College of Florida. The Commodores coming of a good season overall going 31-18 last year but just 11-13 in the Panhandle conference.

2nd year Head Coach Tyler Younger says after his first full year of recruiting, he’s got the 23 guys to make a long run. Here’s the cool part, 9 of those 23 guys are Bay County high school alum.

“This area has always been pretty good at baseball, it just seems like this particular year there was, last year’s graduating class there was just a lot of talent that we felt like could play here and help us. Anytime you can get local kids I feel like it’s a good thing because those kids have a lot of pride in what they’re doing because they’re from here. Gulf Coast is the hometown college, and they just have a lot of pride in what they’re doing.”

After opening weekend, the schedule doesn’t get any easier. Once the team is back home, they begin prep to host the Visit Panama City JUCO Baseball Classic. Younger said this classic will bring in some of the top talent in the Panhandle and hopefully set the tone for his guys this season.

“It’ll be a 16-team tournament, this year out of the top 20 ranked teams via NJCAA, 6 of the 20 teams will be in our tournament. It’ll be a lot of good talent, I think there were 7 guys who were draft and follows last year in the entire country, 4 of them will be playing in that tournament. A lot of eventual pros, maybe some eventual big leaguers and guys that go on to 4-year schools and do well for themselves. It should be a good tournament.”

Their game on Friday is at 4pm, then they’ll finish out the weekend over in Bradenton against Eastern Florida and Miami Dade.

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