The Crusader Smash Bros.: Gavin and Vaughn Howard keep crushing it for Pensacola Catholic baseball
Pensacola Catholic baseball head coach Richard LaBounty called his team a “band of brothers.”
They don’t care who the “hero” is. Every player cheers each teammate on. The Crusaders, ranked in the top five of the state in the FHSAA, eclipsed 20 wins in a season – with a handful of games to go – for the first time since 2021, have a “strong desire to win.”
But within that band are a couple soloists.
Actual brothers.
Gavin and Vaughn Howard are standing out on a Pensacola Catholic squad that is making heads turn throughout the state.
“I certainly admire their attitude and admire the closeness that they have. They cheer each other on,” LaBounty said. “They have a strong desire to win. It’s been contagious with our team.”
Through 21 games, the Howard brothers are both batting over .350. Vaughn has a slight advantage at .361 (22-for-81) compared to Gavin’s .356 average (16-for-74). However, Gavin, a junior and the older brother by two years, has three home runs. Vaughn, a freshman, has crushed a pair of home runs.
It all stems from the competitive nature that the brothers bring with them. LaBounty and the brothers all said it doesn’t impede on their relationship – they keep pushing each other to the limit to get better as baseball players.
And thanks to a strong support system from the Howard family, LaBounty said Gavin and Vaughn both have a “great work ethic.”
“I’ve never heard them have to encourage the other one to compete. I think that’s something they’ve learned from their parents,” LaBounty said. “I don’t think they have to encourage one another at all. It’s instilled in them. …
“They just want to win.”
‘Neither one of us wants to lose to the other one’
Competing with each other is all the Howard brothers have known. Ever since the days of growing up, playing sports in the yard, they went head-to-head.
It wasn’t just baseball, either.
Who won more? The brothers didn’t keep exact count, but they always knew who won that day. And that didn’t come without some expected frustration between the competitors.
“It would normally depend on who was winning at the time,” Gavin said. “Whoever was losing seemed to get frustrated first.”
So how did they solve problems? The silence – literally – was deafening.
“We would normally go separate ways into the house,” Gavin said. “I’d go to my room and he’d go into the kitchen or living room and not talk until the anger eased off.”
Even with all the sports being played, both brothers gravitated toward baseball. Just with the age difference, Gavin started playing first. Vaughn began playing because he wanted to be like his older brother.
Because of the two-year age gap, outside of Pensacola Catholic, Gavin and Vaughn only played on the same youth team once.
It was when Gavin was 8 years old, playing on an 8U team. Vaughn, just 6 at the time, was already showing his talents with players older than him.
“It was crazy,” Vaughn said. “There was a saying our coach would say, ‘6-year-old power!’ It was really cool.”
The brothers have been on the same travel baseball programs throughout their lives – definitely making it easy on their families to be able to take one car, book one hotel and make one trip to compete at different tournaments – but haven’t been on the same team.
If one brother finishes his game first at a travel tournament, it makes it easy to jump over to a different field at the complex to watch the other one close out his game.
And that makes playing on the same Pensacola Catholic baseball team all the more special.
“We’ve always grown up together have always loved the game,” Vaughn said. “It’s so cool how close we are. To be able to play together at the high level we are, it’s awesome.”
“Of course, we still want to do better and be the best that we can. As long as we’re both succeeding and playing well, that’s all that matters,” Gavin said. “Neither one of us wants to lose to the other one.”
‘We’re going to pick each other up’
As Gavin, now 18, and Vaughn, now 16, have grown up, they’ve also matured. That means they don’t get frustrated with each other anymore. In fact, when one brother is frustrated, the other brother is right there to help.
On the field, one brother can aid the other – literally. Vaughn and Gavin hit back-to-back in the Pensacola Catholic lineup – fourth and fifth – and have had some consecutive monster hits to propel the prolific Crusader offense, which has outscored opponents 227-57 this year.
LaBounty didn’t purposely put the brothers back-to-back. It just fell that way. And it’s worked.
“We had different lineups the first 10 games. The Howard brothers were always in it,” LaBounty said. “Ten to 12 games ago, we’ve stayed with Vaughn in the four-hole and Gavin in the five-hole.”
Notably, both brothers crushed home runs in the Crusaders’ 15-0 mercy-rule win against Noble (Oklahoma) on March 20. Gavin smoked a two-run bomb to center field in the bottom of the first inning. An inning later, Vaughn matched his brother – but it was a three-run homer – also over the center-field fence.
“Man, that was something else. The funny thing is, we hit our home runs in basically the same place,” Vaughn said. “One of our JV teammates got the baseballs and they were right next to each other.”
In the Pensacola Catholic game against Central, Vaughn and Gavin hit back-to-back doubles. Vaughn ripped his first with Gavin standing at the on-deck circle.
“Being able to be right there and watch his at-bat, I can always learn from his swing,” Gavin said. “Whenever he smokes one down the line, I’m the first one right there yelling, ‘Go, boy! Run!’”
Then Gavin sent another double into the outfield.
“If I get on base, I always have my big brother behind me to hit me in,” Vaughn said. “When I stand on base, I always know he’s going to hit me home when he smokes it out there. I just jog on home. … I’m so proud of that moment.”
Even more special is the off-field relationship that the brothers have as they’ve gotten older. They might get frustrated with themselves, but that means they can vent to one another – especially during the car ride home.
Baseball is a finicky game. A player is bound to have a slump at some point – and it doesn’t appear the Howard brothers have had one so far this year – but even the slightest issue, the brothers can talk it out.
“We’re going to pick each other up,” Vaughn said.
“Something that (Vaughn) has going on today, I might have that same problem tomorrow. We work through a lot together,” Gavin said. “It’s easy when we’re together to talk through everything and work through what happened during that game, and how we felt. That way we feel better for the next game.”
‘I can learn so much from every player out there’
Vaughn is the only freshman on the Pensacola Catholic squad. That means he has 26 other players – including Gavin – plus a host of coaches to learn from, including baseball skills and life skills.
With such a high-caliber team, Vaughn has plenty of older role models on the squad.
“For me to be a freshman on this type of team, I can’t really explain it. It’s incredible,” Vaughn said. “It’s such a blessing. This is such a high-level team. I can learn so much from every player out here.”
Gavin is currently committed to Division I Georgia Tech, and he self-described his recruiting process as a “trial run” for the Howard family. Gavin knows Vaughn is going to be a highly sought after prospect by the time Vaughn gets to be a junior – but that’s still a couple years away.
Even as an eighth-grader, Vaughn was garnering some interest from college programs, but with NCAA rule changes, college coaches can’t talk to players until the summer going into their junior season. That means Vaughn officially has to wait until the summer of 2025.
“Inevitably, it’s going to be Vaughn’s turn eventually to go through all that,” Gavin said. “We’ll have the knowledge and the right steps to take when it comes to his recruiting process.”
“I’ve learned a lot from Gavin on what to do and what not to do,” Vaughn said.
At the end of the day, Gavin and Vaughn are close – and it’s not lost on LaBounty, who “certainly sees” their off-the-field relationship. He doesn’t think much of the blood relation when they’re playing. Gavin and Vaughn are consistently striving to be better players, working on their game “24/7,” LaBounty said.
And better yet, the brothers get one more year of playing high school baseball together.
“This is definitely the best team I’ve probably ever played for. Just being able to share all of this success and all that stuff with my brother, it’s something no one really gets to do,” Gavin said. “It’s very rare.”
“It’s pretty sweet,” Vaughn said. “We’re definitely baseball twins.”
Ben Grieco is a sports reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He can be reached on X (@BenGriecoSports) and via email at BGrieco@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola Catholic baseball brothers standing out on high-caliber team
