Not having a 2020 baseball season was tough for Canfield High School coach Gary Knittle.

Saying goodbye to his seniors was even tougher.

Knittle was only in his second year as head coach at Canfield, but he was an assistant for five years prior to that, so he worked with this class from the time they were freshman to seniors. He recently brought them all together for a special ceremony and one last talk.

“It was a little emotional,” he said. “At the end of any season, unless you win a state title, you’ve got to have that (season-ending) talk with the team. I told the kids I cry every year. This year, it’s not coming off a loss, but it is a big loss. I’m losing six guys who didn’t get that opportunity this year at the end. Sure enough, I teared up. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I won’t cry,’ and sure enough, I do.”

He and the Canfield booster club didn’t let the senior players leave empty-handed.

They gave each senior a $500 scholarship to use for their post-graduation endeavors. It lessened the sting of losing their final season — one that looked to have plenty of promise after the perennial power went to the district title game in 2019.

Many of the six seniors — Brent Herrmann, Brayden Beck, Seth Velker, Cole Rothbauer, Dom DeBonis and Sam Starr — were longtime friends who couldn’t wait for that last hurrah.

“We’ve played all the way from little league together,” said Herrmann, a pitcher and outfielder for the Cardinals who is currently deciding on where to play college baseball. “It was a great run. We were hoping for a great year this year. We’re all brothers. We’ve always got each other’s backs. We were really excited for this year. We were hoping to lead this team to a district championship game and go further, beat Poland. But that doesn’t get to happen, so we’re all a little devastated from that.

“… This was their way of sending us off, like their final gift to us. It was a nice thing.”

It meant a lot to Knittle as well.

The team gathered at the field and donned new uniforms they purchased prior to the season, a replica of the St. Louis Cardinals old jerseys. It was the first and only time they were able to wear them.

The Cardinals held a brief ceremony, recognizing the six seniors, and they hung out in the dugout and traded a few stories before Knittle gave a farewell speech to a group he won’t soon forget.

“For me, those seniors, I had them as freshmen with freshmen baseball and then up with JV and varsity baseball, so I did spend a lot of time with them,” he said. “That made it a little more special, getting to see them all four years and growing with them.”

The players appreciated it as well.

Velker was a two-year letter-winner who pitched and played in the outfield. His father, Mark, was formerly the president of the Diamondbacker Booster Club and is now the vice president. He helped put the ceremony and scholarships together.

Seth, who is going to Ohio State University for college, was grateful for the monetary gift as well as Knittle’s influence.

“He was telling us the whole time, ‘I’m not going to cry — I swear.’ Then he got choked up in like the first 10 words. It was very funny,” said Velker, who credited Knittle for much of his success. “He kind of taught me how to be a leader. He always saw me as a leader. I was always the vocal one on our team. He taught me to take in the young guys and be smart because everyone is watching what you’re doing. We’ve shared a lot. He’s a really good friend of mine now.”

The connection with the players made sending them away with a meaningful gift extra special.

Knittle, too, is smarting from losing a chance to compete with a group of kids he spent the last four years grooming and growing with at Canfield. The passion he showed was more about watching his players evolve from kids to young men.

It’s a lasting image he hopes to hold onto from a lost season.

“It was special,” he said of the ceremony. “For a couple of them, it would have been their first year of varsity. They got their first letters. They never really had the opportunity to play varsity baseball, so that hurts, from my standpoint. They put a lot of work in, and this was finally going to be their shot, and they lose out on everything.

“It was a bittersweet moment, but it all came together, and it was closure for us. That was the big thing.”