When the Bryant Hornets baseball team made its annual spring break trip to play in Florida, year after year, something important invariably occurred. They were almost always better when they came back. Sometimes it was a personnel decision; sometimes it was just a matter of the team gelling, getting a little closer and a little more cohesive.
There were times, as well, that someone emerged to lock down a spot that, up to that point, had been a question mark.
The latter was the case in 2016 and the result were many of those other results as a consequence. Hornets head coach Kirk Bock and his assistant Travis Queck were pondering the designated hitter spot, hoping to lengthen the batting order, increase the offensive firepower.
They decided to plug in senior Jordan Gentry, who had been valuable as a back-up catcher and a utility player during his first three years on the team.
For the rest of the season, Gentry was a fixture in the lineup, batting fifth and producing. Showing a knack for hitting in the clutch, he wound up batting .370 (27 of 73) with 23 runs scored and 16 knocked in as the Hornets surged to a 7A/6A-Central Conference championship and the team’s fourth State title in seven years.
“Once he took over in Florida as our DH, it changed the outlook of our offense,” acknowledged Bock, who has since taken a job as assistant athletic director at Bryant, handing the reins to the baseball program to Queck. “He brought that spark that we needed.”
“Jordan was a guy that we had to have,” Queck related. “He was a piece of the puzzle. Jordan, offensively, brought to the table what we needed, a guy that could go alley to alley, and bring some guys around. He did a great job. He fit the role we needed.
“When Jordan entered that line-up, when he took over that spot, it started clicking for everyone,” he added. “It impacted the team in a positive manner. Obviously, we wouldn’t be where we were without him.”
And on Wednesday, Gentry, the son of Shawn and Melanie Gentry, reaped further rewards when he signed his national letter of intent to continue his education and baseball career under scholarship at the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo., (just outside of Branson), next fall.
“Coach Bock introduced me to the coach (Neale Richardson),” Gentry related. “We talked at the end of the (high school) season. He wanted to come and watch me play and the game he came and watched was the State championship game. I guess he liked what he saw. He told me to come take a visit the following Tuesday. We toured the campus then we signed up there that day.
“It was beautiful and I liked how it’s a work-based college,” he said. “You basically work for your tuition up there. I can have a job on campus and that pays for everything. You just have to play for room and board. It’s a real good set-up there. The people are nice. It’s a Christian college. It’s really nice.”
Gentry said he was thinking about going to Henderson State University in Arkadelphia or Arkansas Tech University in Russellville where other former Hornets had signed.
“But they never really showed much interest,” he related. “Coach Richardson was the first one to actually offer me so I went for it.”
Gentry’s emergence as a hitter started last summer when he hit over .450 to help lead the Bryant Black Sox to the AA American Legion State championship. Regarding his step forward for the Hornets, he said, “I’d just been practicing with my dad and really working on drills with Coach Bock in the cages. That just carried over to the games. For a while, it seemed like I couldn’t not get on base.”
As for his hitting in the clutch, he said, “It’s just the way it worked out. I treated every at bat like it was the same. It was just something that happened, just a lot of practice prepared me for that situation.”
Gentry was always the kind of player that was willing to do whatever he could to help the team. In fact, that’s how he came to be a catcher.
“Growing up, I mainly played shortstop and I played that forever,” he said. “Then, my sophomore year on the high school team, Coach Bock needed a bullpen catcher.”
And Gentry volunteered to give it a try.
“I guess it kind of stuck with me,” he said. “I did that throughout the rest of high school. I liked it. It was fun.”
“This is a guy that’s been a program guy, that has worked extremely hard, and when he got his opportunity, he took advantage of it and just ran with it,” Bock said. “Without him in our order, we wouldn’t have been as successful as we were.
“We had a need at a time and he ended up picking up on it pretty good,” he continued. “Probably anywhere else, he would’ve been an everyday catcher. We happened to have a guy that’s been there a while. I think he’ll do good things at C of O. He’s going to get a chance and, certainly, his work ethic is going to be as good or better as anybody else’s. You don’t find that everywhere. He’s going to have an opportunity.”
And Jordan Gentry has proven, he knows what to do with opportunities.
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Bock added that it was a special signing for him since it was his last as the Bryant baseball coach, a player in Gentry and a signing he’ll remember fondly. It marked the 41st Hornets player who has signed to play in college over the seven years of Bock’s tenure.
Sherri Tatum
Congrats Jordan! The Tatums