Griffin Nguyen, Writer
Griffin Nguyen, a senior at Boulder High School, returns to The Owl after a junior year hiatus. In his brief break, Griffin has continued playing ultimate frisbee for the school, has picked up the piano, and has lost a couple of good hairs taking AP tests. This year, Griffin looks forward to carving into his skull to find if any good ideas have been fermenting since his last article. Griffin is, above all, ecstatic to get involved with the school and uncover the sides he has never seen before through his participation as a writer. His first revelation, coming back to the job, has been how disproportionate the adoration of green grapes is. Green grapes are a second option, are less than, and a sour alternative to the much better and more iconic purple grape variety.
![2026 Baseball Season Preview
In the abnormal heat of this year’s February sun, and its rising and falling, the seasons of Boulder High school’s sports teams continue their cycle. Winter sports conclude and athletes reap their rewards. Now too, does the dawn rise as the members of the spring teams, and specifically, of the Boulder High School’s baseball team, begin their season with unshakable hope.
In a fruitful discussion with Coach Whitehead, he carefully ascribes the season as having “a lot of potential, but that’s also what makes it nerve-wracking… because you have to achieve it.”
This potential which Coach Whitehead sees in the team is not just positive posturing, but rather from his own observation of all the players’ strong determination, and the shared bond with each other. With a confident enthusiasm, Whitehead added, “We have a small senior class, but they’re tight-knit, which makes it really fun. This is their 4th year in the program. They bought into what we’ve wanted to build here, and you can see it coming to fruition.”
In this atmosphere of community, Coach Whitehead observed how “the team enjoys being around each other and enjoys playing the game together and that is when things get exciting.” To me this struck as a plainly concealed truth we often forget, how community and finding joy, in a sport, or any activity, can make discipline and ambition far easier. On the same note catcher Sam Skubic ‘27 adds, “I feel great when I play. It is such a great feeling to be able to play with and around my best friends and I am so blessed to be on such a fun and high quality team.” As Skubic puts it, this makes it easier for him to “put a lot of work into the preparation [leading into the season].”
In this way playing baseball or any sport can be important for developing life skills as Coach Whitehead describes how the baseball team had to learn “not to have a sense of complacency, and that’s just in life. Sports allow us to see [ourselves] day in and day out because you have to go compete against another team and if you are complacent, the result of that competition is you get your tail whipped. There is immediate feedback.”
In regards to this year's team Coach Whitehead remarks, “...this group has learned to identify [this sense of complacency] when it comes up and I think that is a huge step in maturity.”
I then asked Coach Whitehead, about the environment on the team, and he looked up at the ceiling, and then the chair, and then to me said, “The guys understand that they are powerful, loving and self-disciplined, that they influence people on their team with their actions. They love their teammates hard, which means they not only celebrate their highs, but they’re with them in their lows. They’re truthful when they need to be truthful, and they’re self disciplined because they’re willing to be. To me, I think baseball is the most beautiful sport because you get to see the pinnacle of individual competition, but more importantly, you are competing as a team. Each piece is valuable, and if you have one out, the whole thing is thrown off.”
Baseball is about life, just as much as to some of these guys, life is about baseball. I saw this because a sport such as baseball, in which each individual plays an important role, trains players how to live beyond the field. As Coach Whitehead points out, “The immediate is wins and losses in the field but the long term, is wins and losses in life. I just love to see my guys succeed, which is so exciting.”
Last season there were some injuries and the team has addressed them by changing the way they train, and by hiring a BHS baseball alum who used to work as a PT pitching coordinator with the Mariners, who Coach Whitehead praised as "being a big part of our health success right now.” With help of PT and bringing more balance, Skubic reflects on the team’s injury bug last season, professing, “I believe we will come out stronger this year knowing how to take care of our bodies and the methodical work it takes to be great. This year more than ever we understand how to be ‘masters of the boring’ and put in the daily work to be successful. Our injuries as a team really opened our eyes to that.”
And as to the aforementioned great hope, Coach Whitehead, told me, “No matter what’s going on, they are going to fight hard for each other, and they hold me to a high standard as much as I hold them to a high standard.” With Coach Whitehead at the helm, the Panthers are set up to have a good 2026.](https://bhsowl.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Color-Baseball-Pete-Sheinbaum--1200x803.png)
