By Robert Perea
After going 4-1 to open the season last weekend in a tournament in Needles, CA, the Fernley High School baseball team dives right into league play this weekend with a three-game series in Dayton.
The Vaqueros won their first four games om the Bud Parker Invitational Tournament last weekend, beating Palo Verde Valley (Blythe, CA) 13-1, The Meadows 5-0, Parker (AZ) 8-5, and Mohave (Bullhead City, AZ) 12-0 before losing the finale 7-0 to Needles. It was a far cry from when they went 1-3-1 and got outscored 41-10 in the same tournament last season.
“I told the guys that too,” coach Thomas Chapin said. “I'm like, this team right now is otherworldly compared to where we were at when we came down here last year.”
More impressive is that the Vaqueros only got to practice twice on the field before going to Needles, because the weather the previous two weeks forced them to practice in the gym.
“And there's only so much you can get done with the sport like baseball in the indoors environment,” Chapin said.
Despite that, Chapin said the Vaqueros showed they are capable of playing good defense. They committed nine errors in five games, but three of those came in the last game against Needles.
“That's one area I knew we were going to need to be a lot better at this year and it seems to be that we will, and again, kind of a testament to maybe some of those days in the gym, just going back to the fundamentals and really hammering that,” Chapin said.
Offensively, the Vaqueros mostly put the ball in play, striking out 29 times in 153 plate appearances in the five games, compared to 37 hits and 25 walks.
Riley McCullar picked up where he left off last season, going 7-for-15 at the plate and scoring nine runs. Sophomore Maverick Parks made his varsity debut going 5-10 with seven runs batted in. Vance Swindlehurst also had seven hits and Nikko Pryor had six, with two doubles and a triple.
“I had a good feeling that we were going to go down there and perform well because of some of the players that we have and what I've seen, they'll be capable of,” Chapin said. “I think just up and down, any nine guys that we played, we saw a lot of good things out of them.”
The Vaqueros also got strong pitching throughout the weekend. Nikko Pryor went 5 1/3 innings without allowing a run in the Vaqueros 5-0 win over The Meadows, while Jayse Jones, Swindlehurst and Matthew Bigrigg also had scoreless outings.
“I think our pitching was the best part of our week,” Chapin said. “Those guys just went out there and they attacked the strike zone. We preached on strikes, we preached attacking the hitters, and that's all they did and it worked out for them.”
This weekend the Vaqueros are scheduled to play a single at 3 p.m. Friday in Dayton, with a doubleheader Saturday starting at 11 a.m.
“We want to start off our league play well, because that's something we didn't do last year,” Chapin said. “It took us a long time to get going in league play last year and it kind of hurt us when we got to the tournament, dealing with our seeding and having to battle through the play-in game.”
With Hug and North Valleys moving up to the 4A this season, the Northern 3A has done away with the East and West Division for baseball and eliminated the first-round play-in game. The top eight of the 10 teams will qualify for the playoffs, with the winners of the four first-round three-game series moving on to a double-elimination tournament.
“I think that's kind of fun and kind of classic baseball,” Chapin said. “You’ve got to win a series to get to the next round.”
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