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Baseball:
Saints ‘Struck’ to start game one of NWAACCs
The Advocate
The Saints baseball team will face the second seed from the Eastern Region in this year’s NWAACC Championship on May 21 at Story Field in Longview, Wash.
On Saturday, the Saints beat the Southwestern Oregon Community College Lakers in their home finale.
Sophomore Vince Schuetz (2-0) led the way in game one on the mound and had the help of freshman Taylor Ard, who hit his team-leading 10th home run in the 11-3 victory.
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Freshman Corey Davis (2-2) led the charge on the mound in game two, holding the Lakers to three runs and five hits while striking out six batters. Sophomore Dylan Jones hit his seventh home run to help the offense in the 10-3 win.
The Saints finished their regular season Thursday with a doubleheader against Clackamas (results were unavailable at press time) and are waiting for the East Region Playoffs in the Tri Cities to find out their opponent in round one action.
Head coach Bryan Donohue said he’s not worried about who they face in the first round and that they have scouting reports on all the teams in the Eastern Region. “It doesn’t really matter to me who we play,” he said.
According to Donohue, the team had high expectations coming into this season and they want to continue to raise the bar going into NWAACCs for the tenth season in a row.
“Step one was winning the Southern Region,” he said. “We always got the big wins when we needed them and we responded to losses well. Some days you won’t have it. But now is the time to play our best baseball. Our guys are really looking forward to these games.”
With a record of 24-4 in the league and 31-6 overall, Donohue said, “Everything we’ve done doesn’t matter anymore coming into NWAACCs. It’s a fresh start. We need to press the reset button and start from scratch and we all need to be on the same page to do well. We are ready to rock this tournament.”
Donohue said the three practices leading up to NWAACCs are going to be very
important before the Saints head to Longview.
“It’s going to be a tough three days before we go up north. I’m going to push these
guys and stress the fact that we need to continue to get better.”
A big part of getting prepared for NWAACCs was overcoming some adversity at the end of the season when the Saints dropped two of their last league games to the Lane Community College Titans and the Chemeketa Community College Storm.
“It was good for our team,” said Donohue. “If you go through the entire season on fire, it won’t prepare you for NWAACCs. A small amount of adversity will help us in the long run. We’ve been tested at times and we responded well.”
According to Donohue, freshman Nick Struck, who had a perfect record of 8-0 going into Thursday’s games, will start on the mound in game one of the playoffs.
“You always roll your best guy,” said Donohue. “I think he wants the ball, so we are going to give it to him. Our team has a lot of confidence in this kid and he’s proven himself all season long.”