While an afternoon thunderstorm washed out a portion of a tryout for the College of The Albemarle baseball team Sunday, it couldn’t put a damper on the Dolphins’ recently completed season — the first since 1976 for the revived program.

Not only did COA manage to post a winning record (22-21) and win two games in the Region 10 tournament, the Dolphins established themselves as a team people want to play for.

That was evident when 21 players — from as far away as Chapel Hill — came to Sunday’s tryout, which was held at Northeastern High School.

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about COA,” said tryout attendee Sam Carlsen, a pitcher/third baseman from First Flight. “It’s an opportunity to play for a good team against good competition.”

Dolphins coach Norbie Wilson said other participants expressed the same thoughts.

“A boy who came over from Croatan said when his team played at Northeastern in the playoffs a lot of people were talking about COA’s new program and how successful we were,” he said. “That feels good that people are saying those things about us. Success breeds success.”

In Wilson’s mind, success was achieved both on and off the field.

“We got better in every aspect of the game as the year went on,” he said. “Athletic director from other schools were telling (COA AD) Jeff Carter they could not believe we were a first-year program.

“We couldn’t have had a better year, not only in the wins and losses, but in the way the kids represented the college and Elizabeth City. Our kids showed a lot of class through the whole season.”

The challenge facing Wilson and the Dolphins is how to become even more competitive. While the overwhelming majority of the players on the team were freshmen, there will be some key losses.

Kirk Higgins, a Northeastern grad who was one of the team’s top starting pitchers, is transferring to East Carolina to study architecture. Third baseman Jake Stone, who led COA in virtually every offensive category and was a first-team all-conference selection, is making the rounds of major-league tryout camps and Wilson thinks there’s a good chance he’ll be drafted. Gavin Mizelle, another top offensive player, may decide to stop playing baseball.

Wilson is expecting “about 14” of the 21 players who finished the season to return. While that’s a good start (“Can we compete with those kids, absolutely,” Wilson said), a top priority will be to upgrade the pitching staff.

Yes, the pitchers, particularly Higgins, Ross Jarzynka and Eddie Perkins (second team all-conference), had their moments, but they all throw in the low-80s and COA needs a couple of flame-throwers to beat the better teams. In addition, most of the Dolphins pitchers were also positional players. While that was nice for depth purposes, Wilson wants to find guys who “just want to pitch” so he doesn’t have to go through complicated substitutions and constantly figure out who is starting the next game.

The hope is that another 14-16 players join the holdovers by the time practice resumes in August. Wilson’s goal is to field two complete teams so that he can maximize the amount of competition the Dolphins get.

“In junior college, you can have 20 playing dates in the fall,” he said. “As long as they are playing on the same day, you could have both teams play 20 games. That way guys get more chance to play and show what they can do.”

The new team members will come from among high school players being scouted by the staff, transfers from other colleges and at least one more open tryout. Wilson said his staff scouted 16 high school games in North Carolina and Virginia since returning from the conference tournament last Tuesday. He has also been in touch with several players who are considering leaving four-year college programs.

While Wilson is looking for talented players, he’s mostly seeking those who feel they have something to prove.

“I’m after kids that want to go to UNC or Arizona State, didn’t get the chance, still believe they are Division I players and they are looking for a junior college so they can have another shot,” he said.

who think this is their last chance.”