Family reunion: Holbrook brothers enjoy first baseball matchup two years in making
Jennifer Holbrook wasn’t in her normal spot in the stands for Tuesday night’s Porter-Gaud at Hammond playoff baseball game.
Instead, Holbrook was standing on a stepladder just behind the left-field fence to watch her sons, Reece and Cooper, play at Folsom Field. Reece is a senior outfielder for Hammond while Cooper is a junior infielder/outfielder for Porter-Gaud.
It was the first time the two had been on opposing sides in their high school careers.
“I’m always in the stands, but I just couldn’t go do that today,” Jennifer said. “I would have been going back and forth between sides. I thought it would be best if I could be out here and watch without distractions.”
Chad Holbrook had the same game plan as his wife, standing close to her by the batting cages down the left-field line. The former Gamecocks and current College of Charleston baseball coach said Tuesday was an emotional day getting to watch his sons and future Division I baseball players on the same field together.
Reece is headed to North Carolina later this summer to play for his dad’s alma mater. Cooper committed to play in the Southeastern Conference for Vanderbilt.
Reece’s Hammond squad got the best off Cooper’s Porter-Gaud team, 13-0. Hammond will host a winner’s bracket game Friday, while P-G will play in a loser’s bracket game.
“It is really neat. I’m really proud of both of them and their relationship has gotten closer as they have gotten older. They have had a little sibling rivalry,” Chad Holbrook said. “They both appreciate each other’s work ethic and both admire each other. That has been cool for mom and dad to observe. This kind of culminates it all with the end of Reece’s high school career almost over. So it is emotional for mom and dad.”
The Holbrooks were just glad to be all in the same place to watch a game, which has been a rarity over the past few years. When Chad Holbrook took the College of Charleston job in 2017, Reece decided to stay in Columbia at Hammond and live with Jennifer’s family. The rest of the Holbrooks moved to the Lowcountry.
The arrangement has meant a lot of travel for the Holbrooks up and down Interstate 26, but the two make sure one member of the family — whether grandparents, aunts, uncles — is at each of the son’s games.
“I’m on the road every day at one of their games,” Jennifer Holbrook said. “We tried to get Reece to move down there, but this was the right fit for him. Fortunately, with distance-wise and with my family here, we were able to make it happen.
“A lot of times coaches’ kids don’t have that opportunity so we were lucky. That was best for both boys to have their own fields and individuality.”
Tuesday’s game was two years in the making. The two teams were supposed to play last season before COVID-19 wiped out the season. The two were scheduled to play this year at College of Charleston in March before the school wasn’t able to host the game.
When the brackets for SCISA 3A playoffs came out last week, the Holbrooks knew the matchup had a chance of happening. Then, Porter-Gaud beat Augusta Christian on Monday, to set the stage for the Holbrook brothers matchup.
The duo both started hyping the game on their Instagram pages and had fun with it all. They did a little bit of trash-talking to each other during warmups.
After the game, the two exchanged jerseys and posed for photos. They are hopeful to get a rematch in college one day.
“Whenever we beat Augusta Christian (Monday), Reece was the first person to know and already put it out there he was coming to play. It was a cool experience. I wish it would have been a close game,” Cooper said. “No one in my life has made me better than my brother, and I’m sure he would say the same about me. Our competition we have — whether hitting batting practice or playing each other — we enjoy.”
Reece, who is a little over two years older than his brother, used to get the best of Cooper in competition, but the younger brother has closed the game and passed him in some ways.
“The competition is fierce,” Reece said. “I used to have him in basketball but his height advantage took over so I don’t have that. But everywhere else, it is still pretty even.”
Both have worked hard to get to the point in their carers. Reece was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 2 years old and underwent chemotherapy treatments for the next 3 1/2 years.
The leukemia is in remission, and Reece still goes to yearly checkups in Chapel Hill. The treatments and side effects affected Reece’s growth and his motor skills early in his life. He was small and not as developed as other kids his age, and was held back in school for a year.
Cooper has been a later bloomer and still is growing into his 16-year-old, 6-foot-3, 190-pound frame. He also has been dealing with a bad back for most of the season and hasn’t practiced much in the past three weeks.
“We come a long way. We weren’t these really talented kids, so it is fun to each other develop over the years to get to where we are now to where we used to be,” Reece said.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
