Lake City tops rival Lewiston for first State 5A baseball title
BOISE – Sometimes a team makes its breaks. Sometimes a team receives some breaks. And other times the better team just wins.
The latter, in a nutshell, describes the Lake City High baseball team’s 7-1 win over defending State 5A champ Lewiston in the all-North Idaho title showdown at Hawks Memorial Stadium.
Lake City left no doubt which team was the better Saturday – or for the season for that matter.
The Timberwolves (22-6) defeated Lewiston (25-6) for the fifth time in six games as the T-Wolves claimed their first state title. And LC finished the season with a 13-game winning streak.
“There’s nothing more that I could ask for,” said LC’s lone starting senior, pitcher/first baseman Alex Capaul who is headed to the University of Hawaii to play next year. “We worked so hard all year. It’s a great group of guys. This is a great achievement.”
Capaul was a starter as a freshman on the last LC team to qualify for state – a team that fell 7-6 in the state title game.
Somehow it just seemed that this time fate was on LC’s side.
“I want to dedicate this to all the former Lake City players and the great baseball players who have come through Coeur d’Alene over the years,” said LC coach Cory Bridges, a CdA High graduate. “This is the first state baseball championship in the city of Coeur d’Alene.”
After back-to-back white-knuckle wins in their first two games at state, the T-Wolves had the title game in control from the start.
It started in the top of the first inning. Speedy junior leadoff hitter Kyle Johnson beat out a routine ground ball to third and the next batter, junior shortstop Trent Bridges, promptly doubled to the center-field wall, easily scoring Johnson.
Bridges advanced to third when Capaul reached on an error, and Bridges scored on a groundout by Tucker Anderson for a 2-0 lead.
Junior right-handed pitcher Chris Combo (5-0) allowed the lone run to the Bengals in the bottom of the inning when Matt Martin had a run-scoring single.
Two innings later, LC extended the lead to 5-1 when it coupled three hits with two Lewiston errors. The T-Wolves added single runs in the fourth and seventh.
The Bengals finished with three costly errors.
“The big thing in the game were our (three) errors or whatever we made in that one inning,” Lewiston coach Tom Grunenfelder said. “It gave them a lot of confidence and put us in a hole. Not to take anything away from them, but you hate to make that many mistakes in a state championship game early and give somebody four or five runs.
“I’m not trying to make any excuses or anything because obviously we scored only one run. They just had our number this year. They’re a competitive bunch and they played with a lot of confidence. Hats off to them.”
At one point in the season, LC lost five of eight games. But things eventually came together.
“We just got more confident in ourselves and more comfortable with each other,” Capaul said. “We started off shaky because we were so young and inexperienced with just a couple of returners. I guess this is what happens when you come together as a good team. This is a great feeling.”
Trent Bridges said LC’s success won’t end with Saturday.
“It’s been absolutely an unbelievable season,” he said. “No one guy carried this team. All throughout everybody contributed. It was great to win for Alex because he’s one of the hardest-working guys to ever come through the program and gifted with a ton of talent.
“We’re planning on repeating next year. It will happen.”
It was the second state title pitcher Zach Clanton was a part of this season. He was the backup quarterback on LC’s 12-0 football team.
“This one was a little more special because I actually got to play in this one,” Clanton said, smiling.
Clanton pitched eight innings in LC’s 3-2 win over Caldwell on Thursday. He pitched the final inning against the Bengals.
Bridges believes the foundation for the title began to be laid in 2004.
“The 2004 team got us in the right direction,” Bridges said. “And this group culminated it.”