With their 2008 season having ended last Friday night in the opening round of the Division 4A East Regional playoffs, the Person High School baseball team had four players named to the Piedmont Athletic Conference all-star team this week and another received honorable mention.

Senior Jeremy Peed (.317 average, 13 RBI for the season) made the team as an outfielder, while senior shortstop Ricky Crabtree (team-leading 27 RBI, .388 average, 11 extra-base hits), junior catcher Trey Davis (.417 average, home run, 13 RBI), and freshman pitcher Dylan Dickens (6-3 record, 1.50 ERA) were selected as well.

Sophomore third baseman Cody Ellis (.388 average, 26 hits, 11 RBI) was recognized with an honorable mention.

Person head coach Steve Evans, whose team completed the season 15-10 overall and fifth place in the PAC-6 at 7-7 after losing at Lumberton, 2-0, in Friday’s playoff, said two of the positive aspects of an otherwise rollercoaster campaign were the maturity his younger players showed and the fact that his veteran players performed up to expectations.

“I’ll admit it was an up-and-down season for us but I think a lot of our younger players really grew up,” Evans observed. “And the veterans on the team played up to their potential.”

Person will lose nine senior players to graduation, which includes four starters.

Peed, who received a scholarship to play college baseball at the Virginia Military Institute next year, Crabtree, first baseman Shawn Whitt (18 RBI), and outfielder Zack Oakley (19 hits, 14 RBI) are the perennial starters who are departing.

Evans thinks all four had strong seasons overall.

“Shawn made just two errors over the last two seasons, which ranks as one of the best defensive performances of any Person player since I’ve been coaching here,” he said. “Ricky was really steady at shortstop and was playing very well defensively at the end of the year. And though the statistics may not show it, I think Jeremy and Zack had great years too.”

Lefty pitcher Chris Morgan saw his season derailed by arm ailments and was only able to contribute two wins and a save before his arm troubles forced him to shut it down for good at the midway mark. One of Morgan’s victories was a five-inning, no-hit performance against Southern Durham.

The other exiting seniors are Brandon Wrenn, Waylon Dillon, Keaton Horner, and Blaine Vachieri.

Despite the hefty loss of players, Evans is still optimistic about 2009.

“We have six returning starters and seven kids with experience coming back next season, so I feel like we’ve got a good nucleus of players there,” he pointed out.

Along with Trey Davis, Ellis and Dickens, junior starting second baseman Stephen Wright (.302 average, 19 hits) and outfielder Marc Davis (two homers, 15 RBI) will be back. Freshman catcher Travis Vaughan was brought up from the junior varsity team and performed well, both behind the plate for Trey Davis, who battled a shoulder injury late in the season, and as the team’s designated hitter.

Junior Geoff Watkins also played in 10 games this season.

Despite Dickens’ six-win performance (allowing just 44 hits in 56 innings), pitching appears to be a question mark for the Rockets next spring, but Evans is taking the glass-half-full outlook when it comes to his staff.

“Nine of our 15 wins are coming back next season,” he said. “If we continue to do a good job of managing the pitching staff, which I think we did this year, I think we’ll be OK.”

Dickens and Peed, who finished with a 2-7 record, were the team’s No. 1 and 2 starters. They combined for eight wins, while Whitt had two in three appearances, Wright had two, and Marc Davis had the other pitching victory for Person.

Reflecting on this season, Evans said defense was the big story, both in a positive and negative sense.

“Throughout the season, defense seemed to be a key factor for us one way of the other,” he said. “We were playing great in the field when we won our first six games and then in the middle of the season we had all sorts of trouble with errors. We made eight in our first game against East Chapel Hill [a 10-1 defeat].

“We started to play better at the end of the year, but when we did make mistakes they seemed to come at crucial times,” he added.

The Rockets didn’t commit an error in Friday’s playoff loss.

Evans cited a 4-3 loss at Northern Durham and a 6-4 defeat at ECH as two games where his Rockets were really hurt by errors during the season.

Person didn’t fare well against the conference’s top two teams in 2008 either. They were defeated twice (6-3 and 6-0) by league-champion Riverside, and second-place Jordan blanked them both times by scores of 7-0 and 9-0.

“Riverside just outplayed us in those two games and deserved the top seed in the conference,” said Evans. “And we had 11 hits in the second game against Jordan but couldn’t score any runs. It was just one of those things. I wish we could have gone further [in the playoffs] for the seniors’ sake but I’m looking forward to next year.”