MOUNT VERNON – Family and fundamentals. With those two simple ingredients, the Mount Vernon Orange Sox have blossomed into a very successful 10U regional travel baseball team this season.
But it's the first word that has carried them through. The team has come together to support Erin Gorsuch in her battle with cancer.
“From the moment I found out, the whole team, the family, the families, have been amazing,” Erin said. “They’ve been a great support to me. The boys, the parents – everyone.”
Her son Gavin has been a key part to the team's success and her husband, Zach, has been there every step of the way as an assistant coach.
“It has been overwhelming, the support we've gotten," Zach said. "I can't even put it into words."
The team went right to work with some fundraisers to help the Gorsuch family. Along the way, they have kept the Gorsuchs' spirits up.
“The boys have done their part and the moms – our cheerleading crew out there – keep it up all weekend long (at tournaments), ringing cowbells,” Zach said. “They pick her up and it lights her face up. It makes her day with the support group she's got. They're one big family.”
Gavin Gorsuch appreciates the way his team has pulled together.
“It's very helpful for our family,” he said. “The guys sell bracelets to raise money for her. They went to bat for us.”
“The boys will come up to me and ask me how I’m doing,” Erin said. “They're always smiling and asking me if I need anything. I never expected this. It has been wonderful.”
Gavin and his teammates even wore pink jerseys on Mother’s Day to honor his mother.
“When I looked out there and saw our team wearing pink jerseys it was very heartwarming,” he said.
Gavin is a part of a very successful Orange Sox team that started the season with three indoor tournament wins. When they went outside for the first time in early May, they opened with a tournament win in Cincinnati where they went undefeated, beating some state-ranked teams along the way.
The Sox also won a tournament in Indiana before adding titles in Dayton and Grove City. They added the USSSA championship in June at Berliner Park in Columbus.
So what is the secret to their success? It goes back to family.
“We're all brothers,” Gavin Gorsuch said. “Everyone plays for each other.”
“We trust each other to make all the right plays, because it's not one person that does everything," teammate Colton Epley added. "It’s all 10 of us. Our coaches have taught us all this and it has helped us.”
Family and fundamentals ... it’s really just that simple.
“We preach it through and through and our motto is, ‘1-2-3-family,’” Zach Gorsuch said. “That's what it is. It's a brotherhood. They're all buddies and they're all pulling each other up when they're down.”
Their coach can’t wait to see what this group of boys accomplishes in the years to come when they move on to Mount Vernon Middle School and, later, high school.
“They've been growing as a unit since they started playing together at 7 or 8 years old,” Orange Sox head coach Jimmy Epley said. “This is a special group.
“This is the most talented group of kids I've been around, and I've been around Mount Vernon my entire life,” Epley said. “I played on two district championships and two regional semifinal teams. I've been around the game of baseball my entire life. I played college ball. There are 10 boys on this team that are flat-out great.”
