FORT PIERCE - Win or lose during this weekend's state baseball semifinals and finals, Manatee will have close to its full football team intact next week.
The football Hurricanes, who also won a regional title and a spot in the final four this past fall, have spent the spring without starters Cord Sandberg (stretching in the above picture during baseball practice Thursday in Fort Pierce), Chase Sandberg and Garrett Waiters.
Cord, a sophomore, accounted for more than 3,000 yards passing and running during his first varsity season as a quarterback; Chase, a junior, is a defensive back set to enter his fourth varsity season; and Waiters is an offensive lineman.
Yet football coach Joe Kinnan sees a positive in what the three have done for the baseball team, which plays Lakeland at 5 p.m. today in a state semifinal at Digital Domian Park in Port St. Lucie.
"This has been good for them," Kinnan said. "They're continuing to learn how to win, and that's big."
Kinnan said the baseball players will be thrown right into the fray when they return to practice next week, though they won't see as much time during Friday's home game St. Petersburg Gibbs as they would have had they had been there all spring.
"We've got other guys we want to take a look at," Kinnan said. "We know what (the baseball players) can do."
Kinnan, who is also Manatee's athletic director, had a hand in hiring baseball coach Dwayne Strong in 2007. And this was why Strong was brought on board, to get Manatee back in the state championship discussion.
"Absolutely," said Kinnan, who played baseball through ninth grade while he was at Manatee. "The last time we won a state championship (in 1963), I was a senior."
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