All-Area Baseball Player of the Year: JP Tighe locked in for a monster year

Published 12:03 am Sunday, June 11, 2017

“Wow!”

At times, Dalton High School baseball coach Rhett Parrott admitted that’s all he could say after looking at the stat sheet and seeing how high and how fast JP Tighe’s numbers were piling up.

Starting his junior season as the Catamounts catcher, Tighe knew his team was returning the bulk of a squad that went to the state quarterfinals a year prior and had the potential to do something special.

“Knowing that this was our year, I wanted to give all I could give,” Tighe said. “I put in a lot of work for this season and it paid off.”

Tighe’s bat was on fire from the season’s first pitch. He hit safely in nine of Dalton’s first 10 games (hitting .531 over that span), driving in runs in each of his team’s first eight games. His hot streak extended all the way into the playoffs where Dalton went to the quarterfinals for the second year in a row.

“I was comfortable from the beginning and just realized it could be a special year, not just for me but for the team,” Tighe said. “It ended up being one.”

Over the course of the year, Tighe hit .445, with three home runs and 11 doubles, all while driving in 58 runs. For his performance, Tighe has been named the Daily Citizen-News’ 2017 All-Area Baseball Player of the Year.

While the numbers may have been eye-popping, Parrott said he wasn’t surprised at the year Tighe had.

“He locked in,” Parrott said. “He wanted to do everything he could, contribute where he needed to to help us win ball games. His work ethic’s always there. So you expect guys like that to get better from one year to the next, just knowing the work he puts in. It’s not just in practice. It’s guys like JP who excel more that are doing a lot of work on their own. Not just summer ball games, but doing time in the cages alone. Evenings, on the weekends, going over there finding time to put that work in. Those are the type of things, his commitment to it.”

The results created the ideal player Parrott wanted to see at the plate in the big moments.

“You look at him, batting average, RBIs he produced, it’s just exciting to see him come up in big situations because most of the time when he did this year he produced for us,” Parrott said.

Tighe’s successes were the result of over a decade of work he put into perfecting his craft.

“Baseball is what I want to do with my life. I put the work in for it,” he said. “I got high expectations for myself for the game of baseball. That work’s starting to pay off.”

Tighe said his first experience with the game was came when he was 5-years old. The love affair was instantaneous.

“First time I ever picked up a bat and I was playing out in the yard with my grandfather. That’s when I knew baseball was going to be my game,” he said.

From there, it was a life-long drive to get himself to a high level.

“The love for the game was natural, but I definitely have had to put in a lot of work, it wasn’t just all natural ability. I wasn’t as good at a young age and then I started to get better and better through my early teens.”

Parrott has coached Dalton the past two years and said over that time he’s seen improvements in the way Tighe conducts himself at the plate.

“The adjustments he’s able to make from at bat to at bat,” Parrott said. “Even in a single at bat, the adjustments he makes from one pitch to the next, he’s gotten better at that. He understands what a pitcher may be trying to do, but at the same time, he’s looking for his pitch in certain counts. He’s really matured as a hitter.”

His coach added that beyond his hitting prowess, Tighe shines with his work behind the plate.

“He’s right in the middle of everything we do,” Parrott said. “Being behind the plate, JP calls all the pitches. His understanding of the game, his understanding of how to work with a pitching staff, the things he does there that don’t show up on the stat sheet, those are just as important as the average and RBIs that you see. He does an excellent job of managing the game behind the plate.”

Tighe said rather than any technique changes, his career year was mostly the result of his mental approach.

“I did make a few adjustments with my swing but really it was just coming out with a mentality that I was going to give it my all and try to prove I was the best player on the field, no matter what, no matter who we were playing,” he said. “That was my mentality, to go out and prove that and I just kind of locked in that way.”

Tighe had the season he did against a difficult schedule. The Catamounts were part of Region 6-6A which had three representatives in the state quarterfinals and a semifinalst in River Ridge. The non-conference schedule included teams like Class A-Public state runner-up Gordon Lee, region champions Northwest Whitfield and Ringgold, and playoff teams including North Murray, Heritage, Lassiter and North Paulding.

During region play, Tighe found himself matched up against highly touted prospects Justin Fields of Harrison and Kyle Jacobsen of Allatoona. Tighe said the competition brought out the best of him.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Knowing who we’re going up against and playing against that talent, you got to bring your game to the next level. Not come out flat and just come out and play harder every day.”

The life-long commitment and dedication Tighe put into the game as put him in a position where all his childhood dreams are on the verge of coming true. He’s already collected a handful of Division I college offers and hopes to have a successful summer season to bring in a few more.

Tighe says he can feel how close he is to achieving his dreams and will continue to work for them.

“It’s getting closer and closer by the day,” he said. “I got to keep working for what I want.”

After two straight Elite Eight appearances, Dalton will have to deal with a number of talented seniors. But Tighe will lead a group of quality players returning to take another swing at a championship.

“It’s been a great experience to make it as far as we have,” Tighe said. “To be the only team that beat Pope in the playoffs, they went on to win the state championship, it was special. We didn’t make it as far as we wanted but I think with the guys we have coming back we can make another run at it.”

Even with the monster year Tighe had in 2017, he feels there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

“Really tune up my defense and work on my catching,” he said. “Make it as good as I can, and keep working on my hitting, because you can never get too good at it that’s for sure.”

If he gets much better at it, 2018 could be simply amazing.