Q&A with Liberty-Eylau head coach Zach Fowler ahead of state finals

TEXARKANA, TX (KTAL/KMSS) – The Liberty-Eylau Leopards are heading back to the state championship for the third year in a row. Before the big matchup, KTAL sports reporter Kylee Corman caught up with head coach Zach Fowler.

Kylee Corman: Do you want to start by just taking us through the season? What got the leopards to this point? 

Zach Fowler: This group right here, of course, won it last year and coming into the season with high expectations. They’ve really done a good job of taking everything pitch by pitch, play by play, and not taking anything for granted. And that’s why the record is what it is and that’s why we’re at the point we are now. 

Kylee Corman: We talked after the semi-state game. You said the feeling never gets old even though you’ve done it now 3 times in a row, but do you ever feel pressure of the expectation? 

Zach Fowler: You can at times, but you know when the game starts, it is about winning that ballgame, and our guys have done a great job of sifting through all that and preparing for each game the same way and not putting too much emphasis on one game or another. And now you look up and you’re at the most important game of the year and we’re gonna treat it like any other and we’ve been in them before and we have a little experience. So hopefully we can pull on that and play well Thursday night. 

Kylee Corman: I went back and looked at your postgame interview from last year’s win and you talked about the guys having a chip on their shoulder that was really fueling them. What would you say is fueling them this year? 

Zach Fowler: We pulled out the silver trophy again this week. It’s over there on the bench, so they’ve been seeing that every day and they’ll see it till we leave tomorrow. Just having that feeling of remembering the heartbreak of that loss, and most of them are on that team so they can kind of pull from that and trying to get into their emotions a little bit on their preparation and how much you win the game on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and not on Thursday. So they’ve done a good job so far this week and we got practice ahead of us to get it ready and one more tomorrow and, and then it’s go time. 

Kylee Corman: I noticed you guys had that trophy out there, whose idea was that? 

Zach Fowler: That was mine all the way. When you look at that trophy, different guys get different emotions. Some get upset, some get heartbroken and you wanna pull those out and be like, hey guys, do you wanna bring the silver or the gold home back home? So you know, just a little extra motivation, not that they need it this week, but it was just one of those things we thought would be a good time to pull out and make them feel those emotions again of what it took, what it felt like to stand there and watch another team celebrate. 

Kylee Corman: You’ve got quite a few seniors on this team. What impact have they had on this program? 

Zach Fowler: Leading by example, we had senior classes ahead of them that kind of set the template and they followed the template and made their own a little bit at times. They have continued the path of leaving a legacy behind where the young guys can follow what they did, and they’ve been easy to follow because they work hard and they get after it. It’s been good for our team, good for our program, and they’re gonna leave a legacy behind that’s gonna continue after them. 

Kylee Corman: They’re getting to do this for the third time in their high school career. What’s that mean to do this with that group one more time? 

Zach Fowler: Oh, it’s awesome. I mean, there’s no better way to go out, playing until the last day with this group. We wanna win, but at the same time we’ve maxed our time together over four years, three of them we’ve played to the last day. You can’t ask for more than that as a coach and at this point, I know they’re gonna go out and play hard. I know they’re gonna give it their best. So it’s not something that I’m gonna worry about on effort and all that stuff. I’m just gonna try to prepare the best we can to win this one baseball game and whatever happens after that happens.

Kylee Corman: Obviously, the last time Liberty-Eylau won a state championship was last year. The time before that, you were on that team. How has being a player in those situations helped you better understand how to, how to coach these guys in these big moments? 

Zach Fowler: I think that this year’s been more of a help because we went back in ’07 and lost and brought home a silver trophy in ’07, so we had a chance to go back to back, but didn’t get it done. Me and Coach Rushing were on that team, Dad was the coach on that team who’s all on staff now, so we’ve all been talking to them about staying in the moment. If you start looking ahead, you can get your focus off track and you may be the better team and lose, or if you stay focused, you may not be the better team and still win. So it’s one of those deals where if we can stay in the moment for the next three days and look up at the end of the game, we might like what we see on the scoreboard as long as we stay focused. 

Kylee Corman: You’ve had a few days now, what have you, what have you seen from London? 

Zach Fowler: A really good team and a lot of tradition. This is their fifth year in a row in Austin, which tells you these guys started before these guys were in school, so their system is good. They’re well coached. They do everything right. Corpus Christi is a baseball rich area, a lot like Texarkana as we’re seeing this weekend. So it’s one of those deals where a lot of respect goes towards those guys.  We know what kind of baseball’s played down that way after playing Calallen last year, and we know we’re in for a dogfight. The format’s changed, but I think the best two teams ended up in the final, and that’s what you want and at the end of the day, I think we’re gonna crown a champion. It’s a true champion this year and it’s gonna be awesome. 

Kylee Corman You mentioned Texarkana, you guys aren’t the only Texarkana team playing for a championship. What’s that say about this baseball community? 

Zach Fowler: Oh, it’s so much fun, we played each other so much and for so long.  It’s just so much fun, and iron sharpens iron, and it’s not an accident that we’re both good. We push each other to that level. But at the same time, you know, we’re not gonna worry about their prep. They’re not gonna worry about ours. We’re gonna go try to handle business on Thursday night and then hopefully go support them on Friday as they take care of it as well, but that’s gonna be Coach Fincher’s gonna prep and his guys. We’re gonna prep over here and we look forward to seeing him play, but right now we wanna take care of business on our end first.

Kylee Corman: Now you guys, no stranger to the championship at this point. Have you guys developed any traditions? 

Zach Fowler: We have the same itinerary. We haven’t changed that. Tomorrow we’ll go down, we’ll practice and Waxahachie on the way down, eat a little bit of lunch before practice, and then we have a little steak dinner tomorrow night. So we have some traditions that have kind of begun to start, but our guys know it’s not a birthright to go down there. They’ve had to earn it each year. So then the next group have to earn it as well if they wanna go. We’ve developed a few traditions that we keep the same, but most of all it’s just a whole different experience, a whole different place. It’s cool that these guys got to play at Disch last year and this year they get to go to Dell Diamond to play, so a little different environment, a little different atmosphere, so that’ll be new to them and fun to them. It’s gonna be an exciting time and we’re ready to get going. 

Kylee Corman: What’s this team most excited about this week? 

Zach Fowler: I hope they’re excited about the game itself. If we can stay focused on the game part of it, I think this group’s gonna be good. They’ve always been good at getting up to play a game, so I think that’s what they’re most excited about is playing in front of about 6000 people and getting back in that environment that they were in last year and we talk about all the time, it’s like playing high stakes poker at this point. You’re gonna get your fill of adrenaline and all that stuff, but can you keep your emotions in check? Can you go back to the fundamentals when it matters, and that’s gonna be our focus on 7 o’clock Thursday night.

Liberty-Eylau is scheduled to play London (Corpus Christi) at Dell Diamond in Round Rock for the 3A-DI state title. First pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m.