The Fernley High School baseball team opened league play with a three-game sweep at the hands of Dayton last weekend, and coach Thomas Chapin said the story was simple: too many mistakes in every phase of the game.
“Too many little things we don’t do right,” he said. “We shoot ourselves in the foot. At the end of the day, this series was about too many mistakes, at the plate, on the mound, in the field, on the bases. Baseball’s a game where you can’t afford to make that many mistakes because mistakes turn into runs.”
All three of the games were close into the late innings. Even Friday’s first game, which Dayton won 11-1, was a 2-1 game before Dayton scored six runs in the fifth and three in the sixth.
The first game of Saturday’s doubleheader was tied in the fifth inning, but Dayton scored two in the fifth and one in the sixth to win 8-5. In Saturday’s second game, the Vaqueros came from behind to tie the game in the fifth inning before losing 9-7.
“Friday, I walked away feeling like we got our butts kicked,” he said. “But 2-1 game, we know where we’re at. We’re right there. We know what we’re capable of when we clean up those mistakes and we fix those things.”
The Vaqueros were down 2-0 Friday, but got a run on a ground out and had the tying run on third base in the top of the fifth but left the runner stranded. Then in the bottom of the inning, an error on a Dayton bunt loaded the bases with no outs, and Dayton capitalized immediately with a two-run double by Michael Reitman to start the six-run rally.
Chapin credited Dayton for taking advantage of Fernley’s miscues.
“I think they’ve massively improved from a year ago, and I think that’s what our league is going to be like all year,” he said. “I think anyone’s good enough to beat anybody. When you make that many mistakes, it opens the door for teams to capitalize.”
Saturday the Vaqueros answered in the next half inning after each of the first three times Dayton scored. But pitching in relief, Reitman shut the Vaqueros down in the sixth and seventh innings, allowing only a walk in the sixth and hitting a batter in the seventh.
In the second game, the Vaqueros again fought from behind, tying the game 5-5 in the fifth inning when two runs scored on a Dayton error. In the bottom of the fifth, Zackary Burnitt blasted a home run to put Dayton back up 6-5, then Duke Evans drove in two more with a double.
The Vaqueros scored twice to make it 8-7 in the sixth, but a walk, an error and a hit batter set up Reitman to drive in the insurance run.
Despite the sweep, Thomas said he was encouraged by his team’s competitiveness.
“They don’t stop playing,” he said. “My job is to take that competitiveness and funnel it into what turns into success. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. You get back on the horse Monday and go to work and you do what you can to win the next three.”
This weekend, Fernley hosts Truckee for a league series with a single game at 3 p.m. Friday and a doubleheader starting at 11 a.m. Saturday. The Wolverines, the defending state champions, graduated a senior-heavy roster but remain dangerous.
“They’re extremely well-coached,” Thomas said. “They reloaded with a good JV group, a lot of sophomores, and they went up and took it to Lowry this weekend. I expect a very competitive series where the team that wins is probably the one that doesn’t make the mistakes.”
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