From the Archives: 2000 — Part One: Nothing Came Easy
There are seasons that seem to follow a script.
The 2000 Midland Lee Rebels were not having one of them.
By the time the regular season ended, Lee had been through weather delays, rivalry swings, a three-team district race, coin flips, extra innings and enough late-season uncertainty to make it difficult to tell from one day to the next exactly where the Rebels stood.
In perfect Rebel fashion, they just kept moving forward. Early in the spring, there were signs that Lee had the pieces to be dangerous. The Rebels had pitching, experience and enough offense to put pressure on teams in a hurry. During the Tournament of Champions, Lee began showing some of that potential, even as the season was still taking shape. Coach Jesse Benavidez had already identified the formula.
“Right now we’ve been doing good because we’ve scored some runs in two games.”
Simple enough.
Score runs. Get good pitching. Give yourself a chance. For much of 2000, though, nothing surrounding that formula would be simple.
A Rivalry That Wouldn't Give an Inch
Midland High was again right in the middle of Lee's season. The two programs were fighting not only for bragging rights, but for control of District 4-5A, and—as had happened so many times before—the season series refused to belong completely to either side.
Lee took one game but Midland High answered in the other.
In the rematch, the Bulldogs beat the Rebels 11-6, powered in part by two home runs from Cotey-Joe Cswaykus. The result left the rivals splitting their season series yet again and kept the district race from developing anything resembling a comfortable favorite.
That was becoming the story of the year. Every time someone appeared ready to take control, something changed. Lee wasn't dealing only with Midland High, Abilene Cooper remained in the picture. So did Abilene High. San Angelo Central was capable of wrecking anyone's plans on the wrong afternoon. By late April, the top of District 4-5A had become crowded.
Two Football Players Walk Onto a Baseball Field
Meanwhile, two names better known around West Texas for what they did under Friday-night lights were beginning to make quite a bit of noise on the diamond. Jon Rogers and Cedric Benson didn't simply occupy spots in Lee's lineup, they were changing games.
Against Abilene High, both hit two home runs apiece as Lee rolled to an 11-6 victory. Rogers was also one of the Rebels' most important arms, giving Lee a senior pitcher capable of taking the baseball in major games. Benson, still a junior, supplied another kind of danger.
After the Abilene High win, Benavidez offered a sentence that may have summed up his team's potential better than any statistic could:
“We can beat anyone if we’re ready to play.”
That would prove to be true. The harder part was surviving long enough to get the opportunity. The full story of Rogers and Benson deserves more than a few paragraphs here. We'll come back to them.
Then Came San Angelo
Lee entered the final portion of district play with an opportunity to put itself in an excellent position. Instead, San Angelo Central turned everything upside down. The Rebels fell 8-7 in nine innings, a loss that helped create a three-way tie in District 4-5A between Lee, Midland High and Abilene Cooper, all at 8-4.
After an entire district season, there was still no clean answer. Something I had never heard of before, everyone heard about the football coin flip, but a middle of the night baseball coin flip? The Midland High, Cooper and Lee Coaches met late Friday night in Colorado City.
Out came the coins.
Weather had already played havoc with the schedule. Now tiebreaking procedures and district playoff games would determine the order. For Lee, it meant another game.
Then potentially another. And another. The outcome - Midland High's Susan B. Anthony dollar coin came up heads. Lee and Cooper, tails.
Asked about having so much riding on something as random as a coin toss, Benavidez wasn't pretending to enjoy it.
“You never feel good about losing coin flips, especially when you’ve already used one of your pitchers earlier that day.”
It was an appropriate ending to a regular season in which practically nothing had gone according to plan.
Still Standing
And yet, when all the weather delays, district losses, rivalry games and tiebreakers were sorted out, Lee was still there. Still playing. Still dangerous. Still possessing a pitching staff that could keep the Rebels in a game and an offense capable of exploding without warning.
There were seniors such as Josh Haney, one of the steadier pieces of the Lee infield and a player who had already committed to help begin the new Midland College baseball program.
There was Collin Gilliam, becoming increasingly important on the mound. There were Rogers and Benson. There was a team that had spent most of the spring learning how to operate without much margin for error.
Lee hadn't dominated District 4-5A.
They had survived it.
That distinction was about to matter.
Waiting in the opening round was Amarillo Tascosa—and the Rebels were entering the postseason after an exhausting stretch in which they had been playing meaningful baseball every time they stepped onto the field.
Benavidez acknowledged as much.
“We’re tired but we’re ready to go Friday and Saturday.”
They would need to be.
Because the strangest part of Lee's 2000 season hadn't happened yet. The Rebels were about to become very difficult to eliminate.
Sources: Contemporary coverage from the Midland Reporter-Telegram, March–May 2000
NEXT UP - From the Archives: 2000 — Part Two: The Comeback Rebels
The 2000 season was dramatic. I've been home, sick, and reading through this season was like ready a book. Main characters, big moments, all of it. Also- kind of fun reading and learning about my friends. This was a completely different generation. Jon & Michelle Rogers have a son playing Rebel Football and Baseball now. So y'all keep an eye out for him - Ryan Rogers. He's a Junior, same as my son, Noah. The Rogers are Baseball Family.
And as always, if you would like to help Lee Baseball and the upcoming team, the 2027 Midland Lee Rebels, I will link a way to make a donation, purchase an outfield sign, and visit our homepage. You can always reach us via email at BoosterClub@lhsrebelsbaseball.com
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