Ranson: Beach is Greenwave's angel in the dugout

Do you believe in angels?

Many Greenwave fans wondered the same thing Saturday afternoon.

Two baseball movies from different eras — 1951 and 1994 — introduced a similar plot line of a manager hearing voices from angels if he changed his ways. Once he embraced the voices and saw miraculous changes, the team’s losing ways began to tilt in the win column.

Move forward a generation from the last movie to the Greenwave softball field during the 2024 state championships held in Fallon.

The dominant Greenwave breezed through the Northern 3A regional tournament and then vanquished opponents to win the 2024 state trophy.

When head coach Kasey Chu led the green and white to its last state softball title in 2018, her first year of guiding the Greenwave, she had a knowledgeable staff on her team as well as her dad, Jack, a Greenwave Hall of Fame athlete. Jack led Fallon to state titles as a player in the 1960s and as a coach in the 1970s and ‘80s.

The 2018 softball team faced long odds to win the state title, but Fallon began to vanquish its opponents one game at a time during the last two weeks of the regular season.

The Wave won 10 straight games including a 14-2 regional championship win against the same Lowry Buckaroos’ team that started the streak. Both teams met again for the state title with Fallon eking out a 3-2 victory.

Mission accomplished.

Churchill County won its first state softball title since 2018 and its eighth in the team’s storied history.

“The biggest way he helped was just being an ear to listen, (and) someone who had so much experience with working with different athletes and parents,” Chu said after her father’s death in 2021. “It’s never easy being the new person. He would always have a little advice but by the end of the conversation he made sure I knew that I was the coach and he would support any decision that I made. He never let me second guess my decisions, but he always told me to stand by them.”

Jack Beach’s presence was strongly felt in 2018 as it was last weekend when Fallon defeated Fernley twice to take home the trophy. Jack, who played and coached baseball and also coached Greenwave softball when Kasey played in the early 2000s, knew the game intimately, and his expertise was passed down to Kasey.

Kasey has also kept the Beach family tradition moving forward and serves on the Greenwave Hall of Fame committee, which involves hours and hours of work of ensuring athletes and contributors are recognized. She has learned more about Greenwave legacies including those about her father. One she remembers as a player.

“I respected him as my coach and that I was treated like every other girl out there,” she recalled. “Once practice or a game was over, we talked about it there, but it never followed us home. At home he was my dad, not my coach.”

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association inducted Jack into the 2010 Hall of Fame, and he entered the Greenwave Hall of Fame in 2017. The 1977-78 state championship baseball teams that Jack coached were inducted into the 2021 Greenwave Hall of Fame.

Both my son Thomas, a former Greenwave athlete and now a sportswriter and photographer for the LVN, and I spent countless hours with Jack picking his mind on sports. Almost 20 years ago, Jack and I were umpiring baseball games at a Reno tournament and at times Babe Ruth baseball games at the old field on East Richards Street … usually during tournament time. One of my favorite photos of him is one I took a month before his death showing Jack calling a player out at home plate.

One of the biggest shocks, though, occurred in June 2021 when Jack died after a short illness. As part of the Greenwave family, we were all devastated. We rallied around each other like a family. Gone were his years of knowledge but not his spirit. Jack, though, was in the dugout and in the coaching box with Kasey during Saturday’s championship game against Fernley.

Kasey began to tear up after the win thinking about her dad. After all, Kasey was one of the area’s top softball players when she competed more than 20 years ago on the same field with her dad at the helm.

“People texted me to say that he was watching and that this was really special,” Kasey said after Saturday’s game, her voice choking.

She expressed the same feeling after Fallon’s final win of the 2024 season.

“It's really special. So many umpires came out this week and just said, ‘hey we talked about your dad.’”

Jack’s spirit was at the ballpark on Saturday, watching the Wave cap another exciting run to the state trophy.

We all felt it.

Friend, mentor, coach and father. We all knew Jack was at Saturday’s game.

Steve Ranson is editor emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News and covered sports in one form or another for three decades.