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| The dalles wahtonka head coach JR Runyon, left, quizzes his team on signals during practice on Monday. Cory Eldridge photos |
TDW ready for first state appearance
Eagle Indians want to prove they are better than their 8-6 record
By CORY ELDRIDGE
of The Chronicle
When the news came that The Dalles Wahtonka baseball team had earned a berth in the state playoffs — its first since the districts unified — the team felt ambivalent.
Of course they were excited; the team has 10 seniors who can now say they played in the state tournament. But they had just lost to Pendleton 10-4, and their spot at state happened because Summit lost to Madras.
“It didn’t feel right at first,” second baseman Jared Drake said, “but after it soaked in it felt a little better.”
He paused a little, mulling over why it didn’t feel right, then said, “It was put in somebody else’s hands.”
The team doesn’t take anything away from itself, and they know they deserve their place in the tournament. They know they can spar with, and beat, Klamath Union Friday in Klamath Falls. They just wanted more than a fourth-place finish on an 8-6 league record, especially after missing state a year ago.
Last year, the team finished the season 6-6, good enough to share fourth. But each league only sends four teams to the tournament, and the Eagle Indians lost on a tiebreaker calculation of their record. At the start of this season, the seniors wanted to clinch a berth early, not receive one late.
And first baseman Aaron Pray knew the team would make it.
“We finally have a team that has chemistry. We don’t have attitudes towards one another,” he said. “First game, I just knew it was going to happen. We seniors knew we had to.”
They started Intermountain Conference play with a solid 5-2 record, and both losses came by just one run. Then they hit a week-long bump.
“We got comfortable where we were,” pitcher Quinn Macnab said, “and we played some good teams. And when you play those teams, you can’t get lackadaisical.”
The first loss came at home when Pendleton blasted two three-run homeruns in the top of the seventh on two fresh pitchers to win 8-5 and leave the Eagle Indians shell shocked. (“That one I was upset,” Pray said. “Man, the baseball gods must be mad at us.”)
Then they faced Bend, who shared the league championship with Pendleton, and lost the opening game of a double header by one. That close match preceded a 5-11 beating.
Lackadaisical no more, the team won their next three games by a total of 15 points. The second loss to Pendleton finished league play.
“We’re definitely more focused now and we’re going to go in and do some damage,” Macnab said.
So the team has focus; they’ve got talent, confidence, even swagger; mostly they have a desire to prove they’re better than their fourth-place ranking.
They may have too much eagerness, and that’s because they have no postseason experience.
In the batting cages during practice on Monday, one of the players asked head coach JR Runyon who and when they would play after the Klamath Union game.
“It would be Tuesday [against Sherwood],” Runyon said between throws. “But we’ve got to take care of business before we think about that.”
Runyon said that the lack of postseason experience, and the inability to close a game strong, showed last year when the team was junior-dominated. Another year of experience, both in high school and summer ball, and that lesson has been learned, even without last year’s postseason.
With that mid-season losing streak as a warning, most of the team, especially the seniors, aren’t overlooking Klamath Union.
“They don’t have a very good record, but you can’t base it on that,” said catcher Dallas Mattox. “Our record wasn’t that good, but we were one of the better teams in the league.”
So while the team has no direct playoff knowledge, they know the stakes. And at Monday’s practice they had three coaches (Runyon, Ben Donovan and Cory Carpenter) who each own at least one state championship and appeared in multiple playoffs.
With the backing of his own playoff past, Runyon isn’t worried about the game on Friday — he knows the team will come to play. He’s more worried about the drive that begins Thursday.
Drake agrees.
“Thursday night probably won’t be that bad, but in the morning it’s going to be nervous butterflies,” he said. “None of us have ever experienced this.”
Runyon hopes a stop in Madras on Thursday for practice and a night’s rest in Bend will calm the butterflies and let the boys stay fresh, focused on the point of the journey.
“It’s just a rewarding feeling: knowing the players here worked as hard as they have and get to experience the post season,” Runyon said. “Now the season begins. We’re finished with league, and now it’s time to start the season.”
For Mattox, a game-is-a-game-is-a-game. This just has an extra stake.
“I approached preseason games with the same intensity as this,” he said. “I’ve worked three years to come this far, and I’m not going to get to play high school ball again.”
