FREEPORT — The raindrops kept falling, but Freeport High School baseball coach Hank Ogilby stayed upbeat and positive.

During innings he checked on pitcher Dan Burke. How’s his arm feeling? Can he go another inning? Do we get someone up in the bullpen?

Except for taking a year off to watch his son play for Mt. Ararat, Ogilby has steered the Falcons baseball ship since 1997.

And though the Falcons have come down to earth a bit after a nice 5-0 start, they are playing very competitive baseball in the Western Mane Conference.

Despite being one of the conference’s smallest schools in terms of enrollment, the Falcons are hanging tough.

On Monday, the Falcons got solo home runs from Jared Knighton and Luke LaMagna in the very first inning, only to see their bats fall silent in a 4-2 loss to Cape Elizabeth.

Freeport sits at 7-4 with four losses by a combined 10 runs. Take away a 5-0 defeat at Gray-New Gloucester, the Falcons could be 10-1. A timely hit here, a clutch strikeout there … who knows?

But, Ogilby doesn’t dwell on the past and only looks to the future so that he can shape up his pitching rotation with an eye to the postseason.

“I definitely look at everything going forward,” said Ogilby. “You just never know. In the beginning of the season we had no games scheduled for Saturday and we’ve had four already. The weather? You have to line up your pitching and carefully count your innings.”

An example is Sawyer Williams, who has been a mainstay on the mound and leads in innings pitched and goes against the conference’s toughest foes. “But, where do I plug in Sawyer and how do I balance that out after that?” said Ogilby.

Freeport is currently ranked seventh in Western Maine Class B, but are only five Heal Points out of fourth and a first-round bye.

“We’ve had a couple of years back in the 90’s when we were a Class C school and we made the playoffs, two, three years in a row,” said Ogilby. “We had good, strong teams back then.”

Since, Freeport’s best record was 11-5 in 2003, and the Falcons followed that up with a 10-4 mark the next spring.

Uphill climb

Still, it’s been a tough uphill climb in the rugged WMC.

“We have some schools, who have been playing Class B baseball a little longer and their tradition is just that little longer,” said Ogilby. “Our problems have been numbers … we had four classes in a row where basically we had only one real baseball player.”

He looks back at players like Spencer Egan, Kyle Moore, Jon Klages and BJ Perkins, and hopes for more of the same down the road.

“We’ve always had great Little League numbers,” explained Ogilby. “And when they get to middle school they’ll play, too. The real weakness is when they get to the big diamond and do they want to play in the summer? Do they want to play Junior Legion, or years ago, maybe Senior Babe Ruth? That’s where we take the big hit — the real commitment through the high school years.”

Ogilby also sees a problem in the actual playing surface. A bigger diamond, bigger obstacles.

“There’s no other sport where there’s a transition to a whole new field. The basketball courts are the same, the soccer fields are the same. You might have had success as pitcher, and you might’ve had success at shortstop or second base (at the youth level), but now maybe you can’t make those throws anymore. You might’ve gotten by with hitting singles, but now maybe you can’t hit the ball out of the infield. I think some kids get frustrated when they make that jump.”

Going into the season Ogilby said there was a lot to like about his season.

“I really think we underachieved last year (5-11),” he said. “I thought we could’ve easily had been 8-8. This year the goal, and always is my goal, is that I want kids to experience baseball at a high level. Understand how great the game is. When the game is played well, it is a tremendous game … when it is played poorly, it is one of the ugliest games going.”

“The game we had against Falmouth (5-4 loss in nine innings) was physically and emotionally exhausting,” said Ogilby. “We shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times and we were one pitch away from winning the ball game. Two outs and two strikes in the seventh.

“But, it was a great game and these guys could walk away saying they played a great baseball game. It was very satisfying.

“And, normally I don’t say ‘let’s win this number of games or let’s make the playoffs,’ but clearly l do say to them, “you guys can play in the playoffs this year, but it’s up to you how much you want it. You have the ability and I think you can play with anybody in this league.’”

Experience will guide this group through the next five weeks.

“The real positive is that we have 10 seniors,” said Ogilby. “A lot of them have been starting for four years because our numbers were so poor. They are good, they’re good defensively, good mentally and they understand the game … they’ve become good hitters. We don’t have an ace and we’re not packed with guys who can throw 85.

“But, we have depth, and we have lot of guys who can throw. We’ve not been walking a lot of guys (three per game), something that killed us in years past. We haven’t been making a ton of errors. The top half of our lineup, one through six and maybe more, can all hit pretty well.”

Good-hitting team

The Falcons are hitting .290 as team. LaMagna is hitting .438 with three doubles, a triple and home run; Williams is at .385 and Chris Farley .417.

Top RBI guys have been Dan Burke (13) and Josh Weirich (10), while lead-off hitter Jared Knighton leads in walks and has an on-base percentage of .488.

Defensively, shortstop Connor Dietrich, third baseman Burke, and infielders Niko DiFazio and Pat LaFlamme have shined.

“It’s sort of a well-rounded thing with this team. And one of the things I try to say to them is that this may be the last time you may ever play baseball again, so go get it.”

And, spring sports are always hard. Packed season, lots of distractions.

“I talked to these guys all the time and I’ve got some pretty good leaders in catcher Knighton, first baseman/DH Kaleb Farmer and first baseman/ pitcher Weirich — they carry a lot of weight. I think they want to have a good season and finish well. They’ve put in their time. They will police this team and they have. They want to play playoff baseball.

“So far, they’ve played together … they’re a funny, funny group of guys and they like having fun together. A lot of guys on the roster aren’t getting much playing time, but they are being good team players. A successful team does that.

“But, do I count wins and losses? I try to stay away from that … I tell them we don’t have anything easy the rest of the way. We see Yarmouth again, Falmouth again and Fryeburg, whose’s tough. There’s nothing out there that we can write in the book right now. I try not look at Heal Points, and the only thing I tell the guys is to ‘play hard, just play hard.’

“I love the game of baseball and I know a lot of people don’t. I love coaching it, love teaching it. When you see kids get it right, and execute right, there’s not that much more satisfying than that. I played a million years ago, and I still play a little bit, and it’s brought me great joy.

“We’ve had some seasons here where we went 0-16 and 2-14, and I may have done my best coaching … but, all of the sudden you win some games and it’s a different quality. They say ‘oh, you must be doing something different.’ No! But, people get attracted to wins and that’s fine, but there’s is a buzz around here, and I think that’s a big positive for this school.”

sports@timesrecord.com