SENIOR WEEKS: Avon Grove catcher Nole turns attention to college career at Lehigh
The 2020 scholastic baseball season was going to be one of change for the Avon Grove Red Devils.
First-year head coach John Bellaver had come in and established a new spirit among the players, and things were on point for the start of the season.
That is until the season was scrapped due to the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the players Bellaver was counting on was Lehigh University-bound senior catcher Andrew Nole. Nole led the Red Devils in RBI last season with 27 and hit .395 during his junior year, all while being one of the top defensive catchers in the Ches-Mont League.
“Andrew is a great student and a hard worker,” Bellaver said. “He will have a bright future at Lehigh and he adjusted to the change in coaches well and was becoming a team leader through his actions.”
Nole, like every other baseball player in Pennsylvania, was still waiting and hoping the season could be saved in some form, until the PIAA cancelled all spring sports season on April 9, once Gov. Tom Wolf closed schools for the rest of the semester.
“It is definitely frustrating and you are a little mad at the situation, but you have to stay positive and keep going,” Nole said. “We as a team were working under Coach Bellaver six days a week since December waiting for this season to start. Coach is really committed to the program and the kids and we really enjoyed those workouts. It is a real shame for him and the other coaches that we did not have a season this year.
“I am still working out and my teammates and me are working on our hitting and I am staying in shape,” Nole said. “Even if we had a real short season, we were itching for any kind of baseball season. We all had our fingers crossed we get to play Avon Grove baseball this season.
“As far as Lehigh, I am very excited to be going there for college,” said Nole, who will join Downingtown West’s Drew Morse at Lehigh. “Besides being a great academic school, Lehigh plays in the Patriot League with teams like Army and Navy and it is as a good brand of baseball. The coaches were very welcoming to me and they really made you feel comfortable. It is a very good baseball program and I think I fit very well there.”
Besides being a potent offensive threat at the plate, Nole is one of the top defensive catchers in District 1 and has a very big throwing arm.
“I was still holding out hope we could have gotten a season in, but it was not meant to be,” Nole said. “We have a great spirit under coach Bellaver and we really wanted to get going.”
