Former Fredonia High School baseball star Cameron Voss, pictured above during a game while at Fredonia, was in the midst of a stellar senior season of college baseball at East Stroudsburg before the coronavirus pandemic cancelled the rest of the NCAA college baseball season. OBSERVER Photo by Ron Szot.

Former Fredonia Hillbillies ace lefty Cameron Voss has had a bumpy road since moving on from his orange and black roots. Voss, who was a key contributor to Fredonia’s 2013 State Championship, had some relatively high expectations after graduating high school in 2015. Originally committing to Mississippi State University to pitch, Voss had to face the three worst words a baseball player can face: Tommy John Surgery.

The surgery was a large hurdle for Voss to jump. Voss didn’t end up at Mississippi State, instead having to rehab from his elbow surgery. He had to sit out an entire season with the injury, and finally came back to throw at Niagara County Community College, where he began to regain some of the dominance he had at Fredonia. He then moved to his new home of East Stroudsburg, where he pitched last season and really started to regather his groove.

At the beginning of the 2020 season, Voss was finally in full gear — until his season was cut short yet again.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA cancelled spring sports at all levels, including Voss’ Division-II home at East Stroudsburg. Having the season cancelled is certainly disappointing to all athletes, but when seeing Voss’ numbers, it stings even more.

Voss pitched 21 innings before the season was cancelled, but he certainly made the most of them. Voss gave up just two hits and two runs, good for an ERA of 0.43. While he walked 13 batters, he struck out a truly eye-popping 42 batters. It was the first season where Voss truly felt like himself.

“I’ve had spurts where I felt like myself again,” Voss said. “But it never fully clicked where everything synced up. Finally my arm finally felt loose, I was comfortable with my mechanics, and everything just started clicking at the right time in my senior season.”

Voss certainly performed like his old self in that limited sample, but he wouldn’t have achieved those numbers if it wasn’t for the team around him.

“Going down for first spring training trip, we knew what we had,” Voss said. “We knew we could compete with all of D-2. Without my teammates, I wouldn’t be where I am today. It goes back to little league and high school, with everyone giving me a different perspective and helping me out.”

Even with Voss’s dominant start to the season, the thing he was most excited about was the start his team got off to. Despite knowing his own ability, his performance to start the season was somewhat of an anomaly, even to him.

“I couldn’t tell you how it happened, it’s baseball,” Voss said. “It’s a crazy game, and I just wanted to go out there and compete. It just so happened that how my season started got us off to a good team start.”

Sadly, we will never truly know just how dominant Voss’s season would have been, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” Voss said. “When something like that is out of your hands, there’s no reason to get upset, I can’t control it. But it’s tough, we had a good team, and something special was going on down there.”

One silver lining is that, even for a brief period, Voss got to see the fruits of his labor. After missing a year due to injury, bouncing around to a couple different schools, he was finally able to feel — and pitch — like himself again.

“It shows me that everything I’ve been through in my career, working hard, getting back to myself, made me feel better as a person,” Voss said. “It showed me that you can get through anything if you put your head down and work.”

The NCAA decided Monday it is giving spring athletes an extra year of eligibility to compensate for losing almost an entire season to COVID-19. For a senior like Voss, the decision whether to take that opportunity is a difficult one. But Voss wants to leave all of his options open.

“I don’t want to close any doors,” Voss said.