Sherman Oaks Notre Dame baseball had high hopes as nation's top-ranked team before coronavirus shutdown

SHERMAN OAKS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Giancarlo Stanton and Hunter Green are a few of the Major League Baseball players who once attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks.

"We've had a few big names over the past, and we had a really good team this year, " said Steven Hunt, a senior for the Knights.

"Preseason, Max Preps had us at No. 1," Hunt said.

Instead of chasing the Mission League title and possible state and national titles, the season was benched.

"For the seniors, we don't know if we've played our last high school game. It's tough," Hunt said.

RIck Vazquez has been one of Hunt's private hitting coaches since Hunt was a freshman. Vazquez has always preached that baseball is a game of learning from failures.

That message sounds loud in these quiet times away from teammates and games.

"What do you do to prepare yourself going forward that this game can be taken away in a heartbeat," Vazquez said.

Experts around the nation say the coronavirus crisis is the worst thing to hit the United States since 9/11. The 2020 senior class was born within the same year. Clearly there's a lot of mentally strong high school seniors in the world.

"Last Monday when we played our last game - I didn't know that would be our last game," Hunt said. "I think it just teaches everyone not to take anything for granted. You don't know when it's going to be taken away from you," he said.

COVID-19 is a curve-ball no one saw coming.