Another day closer to opening day here in North Carolina, as the excitement continues to build! Today, we traveled over to Chapel Hill High School and sat down with Head Coach Bryan Tuck to find out more about the 2023 Tiger’s club in this edition of Impact Program Preview.

I’ve always enjoyed watching your clubs compete, I can remember watching them in 2022 vs Southern Alamance. That was a big time High School baseball atmosphere. Seems like your kids enjoy getting after it.. What’s your message to your kids for them to play with such passion? 
We’ve worked really hard to create a family atmosphere here within our program and our players have gravitated towards that. Our message is for our guys to play for each other at all times.

What’s one thing most people outside the program don’t know about the tradition of Chapel Hill Baseball?
We’re actually trying to create a rich tradition. Our program has been through a bunch of turnover through the years with many different head coaches. So we are working tirelessly to build and maintain a tradition of excellence and winning and stability within the coaching staff

Looking at the 2023 Tigers – What’s the strength of this year’s club?
This year our strength is our pitching staff. Our pitchers (really young a year ago) got a ton of experience last year due to injuries and being forced to play up. That experience and going to the third round a year ago, we expect to pay off for us this year.

What’s one area you really focused on this off-season with your team?
This offseason we’ve focused on all aspects of the game; however, the two things we’ve really harped on this off- season are getting stronger in the weight room and becoming better base runners. Base running and stealing bases is an area we recognized as a staff we had to get better at after last season.

Chapel Hill’s conference is loaded, talk about the competition every night playing these clubs?
The DAC-7 conference is as tough as any. Every program in our conference has quality players that are well coached. Every conference game is like a heavyweight fight. You have to bring your best every night to win in this league. There are no “cupcake” games in the DAC-7.

What’s your prediction for the 2023 Tigers?
My goal is for our program to get a little better each day and to be playing best baseball late in the season. Not a prediction, but our team goals are winning the conference, defending our conference tournament title, and go a round further this year in the playoffs.

When you first took over the Chapel Hill job years ago, what’s one thing you know now that you didn’t know then?
How much this community would rally around our program and support us over the years.

Being from Greenville, North Carolina and now in Chapel Hill – What’s the biggest difference you see coming to the central part of the state as far as baseball?
Moving to the central part of the state has showed me how good high school baseball is in our state. Just like down east baseball is a valued sport that schools and communities buy into. It’s nice to see its throughout our whole state and not just in one single location.

Below I’m going to list adjectives, list the player on the 2023 roster who it describes:

Leader: Will Staats (sr)

Gamer: Evan Hansen (jr)

Hitterish: Tyler Stillson (sr)

Bulldog: Zach Barnes (sr)

Selfless: Thomas Roberts (jr)

Competitor: James Staats (So)

Stay tuned for another exciting episode of High School Program Preview soon…