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South Carolina

Mark Kingston shares non-baseball lessons South Carolina learned this season

On3-Social-Profile_GRAYby:On3 Staff Report•06/13/23
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Mark Kingston (Brodie Perry/GamecockCentral)

South Carolina baseball’s season came to an end on Saturday in the Gainesville Super Regional, with the Gamecocks swept by the Gators to exit just short of Omaha and the College World Series.

The Gamecocks went through it all in 2023, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and then to a very respectable end.

Coach Mark Kingston raved about the journey his team went on and how they handled each stage of it, knowing they learned some serious life lessons beyond baseball along the way.

“Yeah, as I told the guys, they learned an awful lot this year, non-baseball lessons,” Kingston said. “We were for 40 games the best team in the country. Then for a month we struggled. And then we got it going, we took a step back, we made some adjustments.”

South Carolina baseball reached as high as No. 2 nationally before hitting a midseason slump that spoiled the team’s chances of hosting a Super Regional.

Coming out of a regular-season sweep of Florida in mid-April, South Carolina sported a 34-6 record and looked virtually unstoppable. But the next 23 games were a bit of a roller-coaster, with the Gamecocks winning only eight, three of which came in NCAA Regional play.

A Super Regional rematch with that same Florida team South Carolina baseball had swept in the regular season proved fatal.

Still, Kingston was proud of his guys.

“We stuck together through thick and thin and there’s just so much that these guys will be able to take with them for the rest of their lives about lessons, about teamwork, about discipline, about sacrifice,” the South Carolina skipper said. “So many things go into why athletics can be great for people. So I pray that these guys will be much better people long term for having been a part of this great journey, because it wasn’t easy.”

Kingston summed up South Carolina baseball’s season pretty succinctly.

“The easy journeys don’t teach you much,” he said. “This was a hell of a journey at times. I told them they can walk out of here with their chins up and their chests out.”