West Orange baseball team dresses for success -- Observer Preps

WINTER GARDEN When Jesse Marlo arrived to coach the West Orange baseball program in 2004 ahead of the spring 2005 season, the Warriors had just two sets of uniforms — road grays and the traditional white home uniform.

My, how things have changed.

Twelve years later, West Orange enters the spring 2017 season with a rotation of 10 jerseys, five pants bottoms, three caps and two pairs of stirrups. 

Many of those uniforms have been preserved through the years and a steady flow of fundraising money — through car washes, golf tournaments, a spring break baseball tournament and money raised from renting the team’s field — have allowed the program to add new additions almost annually.

“A lot of it has to do with just taking care of them — they just kind of accumulate over the years,” Marlo said.

Earlier this month, HeroSports.com proclaimed the Warriors as having the best uniforms for a high-school team in the country. Although the objectivity of that statement might be debatable, it is true that, in the Florida varsity baseball scene, West Orange makes a case for being the best dressed program.

For Marlo, a lifelong New York Mets fan, being hired at a school that shared the Mets’ blue-and-orange color scheme was an added perk. When the Mets began wearing their popular black alternate tops with blue-and-orange lettering, Marlo was inspired — and he went to then-principal Daniel Buckman and pleaded for approval for the same for the Warriors.

“That kind of is what started the whole jersey craze,” Marlo said. “I take pride in saying that baseball kind of brought black in (to the school’s uniform palette).”

One reason the Warriors are able to invest to heavily in uniforms is that the program’s facility — also highly regarded among Central Florida programs — was in good shape when Marlo arrived in 2004.

“When I came here, I was fortunate enough for the facility to be in good shape, so I didn’t have to sink a lot of money into the facility,” Marlo said. “So, it was like ‘OK, the field is taken care of, they don’t really have any uniforms — so let’s update that.’”

Marlo will be the first to say there are neighboring programs that keep pace and have plentiful uniform combinations, also — citing rivals Dr. Phillips and Apopka. 

“I’d have to put Dr. Phillips and Apopka right there with us,” Marlo said. “All of three of us kind of compete with it and take pride in it.”

But West Orange players, coaches and alumni all agree that there’s something about the Warriors’ color — the pop of orange, perhaps — that sets them apart.

“Just the combinations that we have stick out more than other schools,” senior Matt Rinks said.

And so, as the Warriors — who made it to the FHSAA Class 9A State Semifinals in 2016 — begin their 2017 campaign, they’ll once again be making the case that there’s no reason you can’t play great and look great at the same time.

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].