By Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

The last time these guys took the field, it was about doing every last thing they could to get a win.

On Tuesday, it was just about having fun and putting the high school uniform on one last time at the second annual East-West Senior All-Star Game at Harmony High.

The scoreboard will read that the East, made up of seniors from Gateway, St. Cloud and Harmony High, beat the West of Osceola, Celebration, Poinciana and Liberty, 6-0, but that wasn't what it was all about.

For about three innings, the players and coaches played it straight at their normal positions. After that, there were outfielders playing third, pitchers playing second, whoever was available playing first, but most of all a lot of light-hearted fun.

It was all serious on the mound for the East squad as Gateway's Manny Rivera and Anthony Lupa, St. Cloud's Tyler Jones and Harmony's Tyler Whitney combined to shut out the West. Lupa threw two of the innings, but he wanted to only talk about his two hits and RBIs afterward.

"That's one more hit than I had all year," he said, noting that Panthers Coach Rob Hammond would DH for him more often than not.

"And that's my bad," Hammond smirked. "If I had let you hit every day you'd probably been around .360."

In the third inning, Whitney, then catching, turned an odd outfield hop into a legged-out triple. His dugout was the closest to him when he chugged into third, making a mock slide — with no throw. The dugout let him have it, mostly mentioning that he would have needed a map to continue if he rounded third.

"Oxygen might have been a better idea," Harmony Coach Mike Fields said.

Harmony's Anthony Grego drove in a run in the second inning on his 18th birthday. Minutes prior, his dad, former Osceola County Schools Superintendent Michael Grego, threw out the first pitch.

Coaches from the entire county participated, including Osceola (Scott Birchler), St. Cloud (Mike McDaniel, Drew Powell), Gateway (Hammond), Harmony (Fields, Kyle DeYoung), Liberty (Nick Philpot), Celebration (Mike Pagano) and Poinciana (Yariel Vignau).

McDaniel, the first-year Bulldogs coach, was impressed with the local all-star experience.

"I'm glad to have been a part of this event," he said. "We need to give these guys who work so hard for four years a game like this, to have fun with guys they've grown up playing with around town and on travel teams."