Brad Horn/Nevada Appeal
The outcome was almost known Friday, but the Wildcats would have to wait through nearly 24 hours and a nine-inning blowout to finally add a banner to the wall in right field at John L. Harvey Field.
The Western Nevada baseball team dominated from the start in an 18-3 victory over Southern Idaho in the Region XVIII championship game. The win will give the sophomore class " all 11 of them " its first championship banner. It was in danger of becoming the first class to not put one on the wall, but the charge to make it happen came largely from that group.
"We've got a lot of sophomores just chomping at the bit to get that up there and just keep going and going and moving on," said WNC catcher Jerome Pena, one of the sophomores.
The 11th-ranked and top-seeded Wildcats, who already clinched a spot in next week's Western District championship by being one of the top two teams in the regional tourney, won the
right to host the district tourney beginning Thursday. The winner of that tournament will move onto the Junior College World Series in Grand Junction, Colo., which begins May 23.
WNC has two banners on the fence already. One is from its 2006 conference title and the other from 2007 when it won the district title.
Of the 10 starters for the Wildcats, seven were sophomores and it was their bats that got game going after playing the first inning to a 1-1 tie.
Pena belted a 1-0 homer in the second inning to right field on a hanging slider that traveled about 340 feet before it landed. After that blast, the Wildcats plated three of the next four batters and eight Wildcats saw at-bats in the inning.
Southern Idaho, which also will advance to the district tourney, came into the game already short on pitching after throwing six pitchers the day before to reach the title game. The Golden Eagles tried to limit the runs by starting Trey Mohammed, who had pitched just 2.1 innings in the tourney before the game. But he lasted just 1.1 innings after giving up the three runs in the second.
The Golden Eagles tried to keep the game under control, but used two more pitchers in the following 1.2 innings before seemingly conceding the game with a an 11-2 deficit by putting a position player, second baseman Andy Fox who worked four innings during the regular season, on the mound in the fourth inning.
"We knew the deck was stacked up against us," Southern Idaho coach Boomer Walker said. "Regardless, you've got to play great against Western to beat them and they had a few more bullets in their gun than we did."
Southern Idaho proved the day before that was capable of putting up big numbers on the scoreboard in a 15-6 win against Salt Lake, but those runs came against a pitching staff that had already seen action in the tournament.
The Wildcats didn't have that problem. Ace pitcher Josh Moody (4-0) made his first appearance in the tournament with Saturday's start and while he wasn't his dominant self, he went five innings giving up just two runs.
After Moody was pulled, WNC coach D.J. Whittemore used a pitcher an inning in the remaining four frames just to get them their first bit of action in the tourney. Of the four, only Kramer Champlin had seen any game time, having pitched 1.1 innings Thursday in the Wildcats' first win over Southern Idaho.
By the end of the game every starter had scored a run and all but Mike Long had an RBI.
Brian Barnett, who didn't have hit in the tournament prior to Saturday, hit a grand slam in third inning and finished with five RBI.
Travis Feiner, who was named tournament co-MVP along with teammate Jordan Lewis, might have added a second grand slam had Barnett not hit into a sac-fly with the bases loaded just before he came up to the plate. Feiner hit a shot to left for a three-run homer that gave WNC a 15-2 lead in the fifth inning.
The high run total came even easier for a good hitting Wildcats team as the run-rule doesn't apply to championship games in junior college baseball.
"It takes a little bit of the emotion out of winning the game," Whittemore said. "The first time we won a regional championship, there were guys on base for the other team in a two-run game. So celebrating then was pretty easy.
"When you're up 15 runs it really has to come from a special place; all the days of hard work are going to well up and that's what you saw come up out of the guys when they won."