Ten is a key number for the Churchill County High School baseball team as it heads to Pahrump for this week’s 3A State Tournament. The 10 seniors on the team hope to turn it up to 11.
The seniors on this year’s Greenwave roster have been playing baseball together for the past 10 years, since they were eight years old. Although the program has reached the state tournament in each of their three years in high school, it hasn’t won a state championship in 10 years—since 2015. That 2015 title was the 10th in school history.
The Greenwave swept through the Northern Region tournament last week, beating Truckee 5-3 in the championship game on Friday to give themselves a chance to play for the program’s 11th state championship.
“We’ve all been out here since November, just hitting in the cages over and over,” senior Anthony Juarez said. “All these hot days, hot and cold days, thunderstorms, we played through them, and it shows that it’s all paying off right now for us.”
The Greenwave rallied from a four-run deficit to beat Lowry 10-9 in nine innings in their first game of the tournament, then beat Truckee 6-2 on Friday and again 5-3 on Saturday to win the region championship and claim the No. 1 seed from the North for this week’s 3A State Tournament in Pahrump.
Fallon will play South No. 2 seed Boulder City at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, while Truckee, the North No. 2 seed, will face South No. 1 seed The Meadows at 1 p.m. The championship game of the double-elimination tournament is Saturday at 10 a.m.
“We can go away from home a little bit, kind of getting into the setting of baseball,” Greenwave coach Riley Horn said. “That’s what we’re here for. It’s business and I think the kids are in a good mindset and they’re hungry for it.”
Senior James Kelsey said winning the regional tournament for the second straight year after playing together for so long was special for this year’s seniors.
“Our last year playing together, so yeah, it means everything,” he said.
In Thursday’s game, Kelsey drove in two runs with a single and later scored on a single by Zack Adams in a three-run rally in the sixth inning after Lowry had opened a 9-5 lead. A sacrifice fly by Nathaniel Zackery scored Juarez with the tying run in the bottom of the seventh. In the ninth inning, Anthony Gonzalez singled home Evan Giovanetti with the winning run.
That win kept the Greenwave in the winner’s bracket and gave them a chance to win the tournament in three games instead of having to play as many as five.
“We play three-game series through the year—we just kind of stuck with the game plan we’ve been doing all year,” Horn said.
In both games against Truckee, the Greenwave didn’t need late-inning heroics because of early scoring success. They scored three runs in the first inning on Friday, with a double by Kelsey scoring Gonzalez and a single by Trevor Hyde driving in Chace Carnahan and Kelsey.
They topped that feat with four runs in the first inning of Saturday’s championship game. A single by Kelsey drove in Gonzalez, and an error by the Truckee right fielder on the play allowed Carnahan to race to the plate. Two batters later, Eric Cornejo singled in Kelsey and Hyde for a 4-0 lead.
After a brief celebration and the presentation of the regional championship trophy, Kelsey was already looking forward to the chance to win a state title with all of his best friends.
“Every practice that’s our main goal, is to win state, so this is just our last step—to go down to Vegas and win it,” he said.
Comment
Comments