When it comes to high school careers, everyone wants to ride off into the sunset a winner. Monticello baseball’s John Page is doing that, even if it’s a little earlier than he’d hoped.
“I’ve always wanted to do it,” Page said. “I wanted to finish the season but there’s kind of nothing I can do about it. I’m glad I got to finish with the game last night — that was a good way to finish it off.”
Just three days after leading the Mustangs’ baseball team to a Conference 29 title with a nearly complete game effort on the mound that helped Monticello upset top-seeded Turner Ashby, Page is shipping out for basic training with the Marines, where he’ll spend his summer at Parris Island before joining the reserves. He’ll take a gap semester in the fall before enrolling at Roanoke College where he’ll play baseball.
That’s left him with a hurried set of goodbyes as he attended a college athletics commitment ceremony Friday and will also graduate before heading to South Carolina to start training.
“Everything is kind of happening in one weekend so I’m just kind of getting it all done and going with it,” Page said.
The circumstances also made his performance Thursday night in Waynesboro, his last high school game after an impressive career on the diamond, particularly special.
“I knew going into it that it would be my last game with my buddies,” Page said. “I knew they’d have my back and I just tried to throw strikes.”
Many of the Mustangs have been playing together for quite some time, from Little League on up, and they had a sense that Page was set on leaving a major mark in his final contest at Monticello.
“We knew we were going to rally around him,” said Monticello’s Jack Decker, bound for Salisbury to play baseball next fall. “He was really determined to get a win for his last game so we were really glad to end it like that for him.”
Page leaned on his defense while striking out three in 6.1 innings of work. He allowed just five hits and triggered a sixth-inning double play that helped the Mustangs keep Turner Ashby at bay. He also scored the first run of the game after reaching on a walk.
That performance came as little surprise to his teammates, who’ve watched Page hit .418 and knock in 13 runs while posting a 3.59 ERA and a 3-2 record on the mound. But his statistics, while impressive, aren’t likely to be what Page is remembered for as he leaves his teammates while they continue their playoff.
“He’ll do anything for anybody and he’s just one of the most genuine people you’ll ever meet,” said Monticello’s Jonathan Heuchert.
The Mustangs’ head coach concurred with that sentiment, that the kind of selflessness required in the armed services is a part of Page’s makeup already.
“He’s always been a very, very mature young man,” said MHS coach Corey Hunt. “He’s made the right decisions. He’s always been a family person, he’s always looked out for the guys around him and the people around him that need his support or the people he can help. This is an extension of the way he was raised and he wants to be able to continue to do those things.”
That sort of teammates-first, never-quit approach is clearly a hallmark of who Page is, and it has rubbed off on his team. Monticello has proven to be a scrappy, tough out for most anyone they’ve played, refusing to go away in tight games like Thursday’s intense battle with Turner Ashby. Page will need that kind of relentlessness when he heads south for training.
“Coach (Hunt) always says that the team is built on country boys so there’s a lot of fight in the team,” Page said. “There’s a lot of fight in both things I’m a part of.”
