The voting for Rowan County Baseball Coach of the Year made last fall’s presidential race look like a landslide.

The eight votes cast — by the five county coaches and three Post sportswriters — were split five ways.

East Rowan’s Jeff Safrit, West Rowan’s Chris Cauble and South Rowan’s Linn Williams received two votes each and were declared co-coaches of the year. It’s the first time in memory there’s been a three-way split for baseball honors, although it’s happened a couple of times in the football coach of the year polling.

Salisbury’s first-year coach, Scott Maddox, and last year’s winner, North Rowan’s Bill Kesler, picked up one vote apiece.

The battle at the ballot box mirrored a balanced diamond year in the county. No overwhelming teams, lots of good ones.

East and North won 17 games each. Both were solid, yet clearly not as good as the previous season when they combined for 47 victories.

West (16-11) improved a bit and claimed its first playoff victory since 1997.

South won three more games (10) than it had the previous year, while Salisbury won four fewer than in 2000, but still won several more (6) than anyone this side of Miss Cleo would have predicted.

It’s the first coach of the year award for both Cauble and Williams. It’s the seventh for Safrit, who won or shared the award in 1991, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’95 and ’98.

The most improved team of the year belonged to Williams, South first-year head coach.

“We were 10-14,” said Williams, a Davidson College grad, who has also been a head coach at Mount Pleasant. “That’s still not where you want to be. But, yeah, we did make some real strides.”

The Raiders took several giant steps in 4A Central Piedmont Conference play. South went 4-4 in the regular season and also won a game in the CPC tournament. A year earlier, South was 0-9 against CPC teams.

“Getting better in conference — that was our main goal coming in and we did it,” said Williams.

Williams cited the Cliff Peeler Baseball Classic at NewmanPark as the key to South’s season.

South limped into Newman on a four-game losing streak. It left walking on sunshine, after stunning East Rowan in the semis to reach the tourney finals.

“That turned it all around,” said Williams. “Right after the tournament, we beat Davie (County) and we were in the league race the rest of the way. We just fell a little bit short.”

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West took the bronze in the stacked 3A South Piedmont Conference race, which was the equivalent of winning some leagues.

“Once the season was done and we looked back on it, we felt good,” said Cauble. “We were pleased. This was a good follow-up to last year.”

Cauble’s second season as a Falcon included a first-round state playoff win on the road at Asheboro, which is a pretty good sign that the West program has arrived as a consistent factor. When you get to the point where you’re winning playoff games on the road, you’re a threat. And in a revamped 3A league which will be minus Central Cabarrus next season, the Falcons loom as East’s strongest challengers.

“We’ll have some real good experienced veterans (led by all-county Matt Morgan and all-conference Ben Hampton) and some real good kids moving up (from an undefeated jayvee team),” said Cauble. “We’ll have some players who have won ballgames and who expect to win some more.”

Cauble, 2-for-2 on playoff trips since moving to West after one season at Concord, becomes the first person ever to be both coach of the year and player of the year in the county. Cauble received the Norris Award as the county’s top player in 1985 when he was an East Rowan catcher.

“I still remember that,” he said. “I believe I was the first one to win the award who wasn’t from Salisbury High.”

Cauble’s memory would make an elephant envious. Research proves him right.

The Norris Award was given from 1978-82 to the MVP of the Salisbury High team. By ’83, the Norris had evolved into the county player of the year award, but the first two winners (Jerry Page and Kris Huffman) were still Hornets. Then, in ’85, Cauble made a little history as the first non-Hornet honoree.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long ago,” said the former East Carolina Pirate. “I still feel like I could put on a uniform and go play. It’s just that my recovery time’s longer now.”

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Speaking of good ex-players, Safrit was the county batting champion at East in 1975.

Safrit’s been back at his old high school for quite some time now. It’s been 11 years since he returned to Granite Quarry after a successful stint at South Iredell High.

Safrit says the level of competition gets tougher all the time, mostly because the coaching across the state keeps improving. Still, he’s managed to set the bar high for the rest of the world with an amazing 225-64 mark (that’s a winning percentage of 78) as a Mustang.

Over the last 10 years, the Mustangs have finished either first (six times) or second (four times) in the SPC, consistently one of the state’s better leagues. They’ve made 10 consecutive trips to the state playoffs.

Safrit reminded his current team of the school’s lofty baseball standards after it dropped its first five league games this spring and was on the cusp of making some negative history.

“Everyone wanted to beat us bad because we’re East,” said Safrit. “That’s just a tribute to our kids. It says a lot for them that everyone wanted to keep them down.”

But, of course, they couldn’t. Eventually, the Mustangs fought their way back to the playoffs with a scintillating 15-2 stretch run.

“This year’s guys carried on a tradition that people like Donald McGinnis and Travis Holshouser and Brett Hanson started a long time ago,” said Safrit. “This year’s kids didn’t want to be the ones who didn’t make it.”

Safrit was on the short end nine times this year — the most games he’s dropped since 1991. But that just shows what an amazing track record the guy has. There are plenty of coaches who would kill to log a 17-9 just once.

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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com