Three local Class 2A/1A Gorge-area baseball teams started practice Feb. 28 to prepare for the regular season, which begins this week and includes a full schedule of games for the first time in three years.
The Dufur/South Wasco High Rangers and the Sherman/Arlington/Condon High Huskies begin their seasons this week. The Lyle/Wishram/Klickitat/Trout Lake High Cougars opened their season Monday with a contest versus the Stevenson High Bulldogs at Stevenson High School (result was after printed edition deadline).
Last year was a COVID-shortened season and the 2020 season was canceled, which makes this year the first officially recognized OSAA schedule since 2019. It will also include officially sanctioned OSAA state playoffs for the first time in three years.
Dufur/South Wasco
The Rangers are expected to be the cream of the crop in the Special District 7 League this year as they have an experienced 19-member squad with six seniors and an outstanding pitching rotation of seniors Isaac Anthony, Kaleb Pence, Gabe Petroff, Carson Smith and Brock LaFaver. The squad also includes two juniors, four sophomores and five freshmen.
The Rangers, guided by longtime (29 years) Coach CS Little and assistant Chad Smith, open their 22-game season Wednesday with a 4 p.m. road game against the Columbia High Bruins at Columbia High School in White Salmon.
“I believe we’ll absolutely have a good chance to either match last year’s success or exceed it, so that’s what we’re shooting for obviously,” said Little. “We’ll just try to improve every day and I know that we’ll put a quality team on the field. We have a really seasoned veteran team, so we should have some great success. We’re always right there going deep in the playoffs, but it just seems like we can’t quite get it completely done at the end of the season.”
The Rangers were 12-4 last year and advanced to the quarterfinals of the unofficial state playoffs, losing 2-1 to Kennedy. The Rangers advanced to the first round of the 2019 OSAA playoffs and lost 5-0 to the Lakeview High Honkers.
“Our seniors should be producing some good things for us this year,” said Little. “Our seniors really are kind of like sophomores though in terms of experience. They had one season (2020) taken away from them and another (2021) one that was vastly shortened. I expect to see Anthony, LaFaver, Pence, Petroff and Smith to lead the team offensively. Josh Taylor and Olson Meanus have been doing a pretty good job in practice and they’ll make some key contributions. Joey Holloway is one of our best outfielders and he’s much improved so I think he’ll have a breakthrough season in his second year on our team.”
The Rangers’ first home game is an 11 a.m. Saturday doubleheader versus the Country Christian/North Clackamas Christian Cougars.
Sherman/Arlington/Condon
A young (two seniors) Husky squad, guided by longtime (15 years) Coach Joe Justesen and assistant Coach Shawn Troutman, will play its season opener at home Friday at 4 p.m. versus the Culver High Bulldogs. They’ll follow with a road trip to Eastern Oregon to face the Weston-McEwen TigerScots at 2 p.m. March 21, followed by a 4 p.m. matchup against the Class 3A Riverside High Pirates. Both games are at Riverside High School in Boardman.
“We lost a lot of our pitching from last year, so we’ll call upon a lot of new people to pitch,” said Justesen. “We’re a young and upcoming team and we’ll have to work on getting some things in order. After seeing everyone at practice, I can see that there’s some quality arms and some real hustling kids. We’re trying to figure things out, like where everybody belongs. We’ll take things one game at time and just strive to be as good as we can be so that we’re ready for league play. It will take preseason games to help us figure some things out this year.”
The Huskies finished 7-6 last year and they have 14 players who are eager to start the 25-game schedule. The Huskies squad includes nine from Sherman, three from Condon, one from Arlington, and one from Wheeler. The Huskies have seven returning players from last season. Sherman’s last state playoff appearance was in 2018.
“There’s lots of kids and they’re trying hard and giving it their all,” said Justesen. “Kole Martin, Ed Rubio, Dillan Stanfield are solid players who can do lots of good things for us along with Leven Whitbeck from Fossil and Brody Geer and Braden Carnine from Condon. So those guys are the ones that we’re kind of leaning on. We’ll hit the field running hard and kind of see what happens in our season opener on Friday.”
Lyle/Trout Lake
The Cougars, guided by third-year head Coach Dave Devoe, have 12 players and they’re hoping to have a much-improved performance than a year ago, when they were 1-9 overall. The Cougars’ lone victory was against the Riverside High Pirates.
“We are a very inexperienced team with a lot of young players and we’re all working hard to learn the system,” said Devoe, whose assistant coaches include Antoine Montoya and David Barthlow. “The players are picking it up fast and they are improving every day. A lot of the games we had last year were against much larger 3A schools like Umatilla and Riverside. I think we can be competitive against a lot of schools our size.”
The Cougars’ next contest on their 16-game schedule is March 26 at home versus the Sunnyside Christian High Knights at Lyle High School.
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