On my recent trip to Lawrenceville, Georgia for ABF Freight, I had some personal time after work to check out local baseball fields in and around the terminal. On a Google Map search of the area, I found Parkview High School in nearby Kilburn, GA as a place of interest and took the short drive from my hotel in Lawrenceville to check it out. Wow, talk about finding a diamond in the rough, or in this case a diamond filled with National Baseball Titles!!!
After doing some research at the field and at home, The Parkview High School Baseball Team isn’t just Georgia great. It is National Champion High School Baseball great. National Champions multiple times, multiple 1st Round selections in the MLB Draft, multiple players each year attended and play at collegiate baseball powerhouses nationwide. It is very safe to say that Parkview High School has a dominant baseball program and has for several decades running.
As I walked up to the entrance gate, there was another man inside the stadium area reading all of Parkview’s accolades. “Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say?” he asked me as I approached him and the field and the rows of state title banners. “From the looks of it,” I chimed in, “these guys are pretty good at baseball.” I got a chuckle out of the man, who was a bus driver for a visiting school playing Parkview on an adjacent field. The bleachers, as you can see from photo above, were peppered with sponsors. The clubhouse was peppered with state title banners. This was going to be a cool baseball experience and adventure at Parkview.
I wasn’t sure how long the gates were going to be open so I hustled around the park and got a few photos and views. Top notch facility, it looked like a minor league ballpark, clean, field was manicured and in ready to play condition. The cracks of batting practice rang true across the outfield to my seat in the bleachers. I witnessed a few players entering the stadium area and walking towards the right field area, where the indoor cage was presumably. Title banners and alumni plaques and MLB player acknowledgements galore lined the fencing leading out of the baseball field area. Even hear of Matt Olsen or Jeff Francoeur? They played at Parkview High School, as did a multitude of other baseball players. Here, see for yourself…
And the photos of the teams line the backs of the dugouts, with some of them autographed by the players themselves…
I’m guessing here but I imagine Georgia High School baseball is pretty high level. The Georgia weather, on average, is far more conducive to playing many more months than here in the Northeast. For example, the 2018 Parkview High School team went 36-6, that’s 42 games for a high school team. Comparatively, the 2023 Rhode Island High School Baseball Division 1 Champion Cumberland High School had a collective record of 11-7, by my calculations just 18 games. And the competition in Georgia, again just guessing here, is just a tick or two above Rhode Island’s average opponent. So, to put a bow on this story – Parkview High School Baseball is one of the very best in the entire United States of America.
I am so glad I took the drive down to Parkview High School to check out their field, their powerhouse program history, and read up on their local, state, and national dominance over the past few decades of competition. Top notch facility, minor league baseball quality stadium and feel, and with all the history of MLB players filling up plaque after plaque, I had to tip my cap to Parkview High School. Awesome baseball experience there in Kilburn, GA. If you are in the area, it is definitely worth the trip.
The Rhiter 