Late start

Don O’Neal is frustrated. His Eagles dropped a baseball doubleheader Wednesday to Clarkston, and that’s something West Valley rarely does.

“They beat us pretty good, both games,” the baseball coach said. “We can forget about winning the season series with them now because there’s just the one game left.”

What frustrated O’Neal most was the way his young Eagles played – routine mistakes are not something the longtime coach suffers well. But at the same time, he understands that his players played the two games under a handicap.

“Clarkston is always on the field ahead of us,” he explained. “It’s the Banana Belt down there and the weather always lets them be outside before we are, and that makes a big difference. I sometimes think it shouldn’t make as big of a difference as it does, but it does. In baseball, it does.”

Of the Spokane Valley’s four high school baseball fields, West Valley’s usually is the first to thaw and allow the team to workout outdoors. This year’s weather has pretty much rendered that advantage moot.

Thus far, none of the games on the West Valley schedule were played as scheduled.

And the same can be said for the majority of practice sessions.

“We don’t just go out there and make things up as we go along,” O’Neal said. “We organize our practices and there’s a lot we need to cover every day. And you can’t really do that when you’re practicing inside.”

The program has plenty of indoor space in which to work, including batting cages and pitching mounds that do their best to simulate outdoor conditions. But it’s not the same.

“Hitting off live pitching is always better than hitting off a machine,” O’Neal said. “And hitting outside is different than hitting inside. The hitting background is different and that makes a difference to these kids.”

And while there is space in the school’s two gymnasiums and its auxiliary gym, fielding ground balls off a hardwood floor isn’t really going to prepare infielders for game conditions.

When practices for spring sports started at West Valley earlier this month, workers were still busy making repairs to the baseball field. Accumulated snowfall damaged the fence behind home plate.

“It was tipped over and it looked like it was ready to fall over,” O’Neal said. “It was decided that we would just replace it rather than repair it. And while we were at it, we moved it back a few feet so we have a little more room back there.”

With the old fence, foul balls behind home plate would routinely float over the protective fence. The extra space could easily make for one or two more outs per season as catchers have a bit more room to maneuver.

The Eagles begin this season younger than they’ve been in quite some time.

“We had a bigger-than-usual senior class that was pretty talented last year,” O’Neal said. “We have a lot of young players this year, young guys who don’t have a lot of playing time at the varsity level.”

As a teacher at Centennial Middle School, O’Neal has had a chance to talk with most of his incoming freshmen. The advantage of a well-established program is that incoming players know what is expected of them and already are acquainted with the way the program wants the game to be played.

O’Neal said one of the things he liked against Clarkston was “ we had kids making mistakes early in the game correct them, and by the end of the game they were doing things the way we want them done. These kids are learning.”

He said he has some seniors that are doing a great job of helping to correct those mistakes in the dugout between innings.”

One of those players is senior Kneight (pronounced Nate) Johnson, who will pitch and play first base.

“He’s worked very hard, and he’s becoming a clutch hitter for us,” O’Neal said. “Nate was in the dugout and getting on his teammates because they were missing signs and things like that. That’s the kind of leadership we need.”

Seniors Kyle Wagner and Ryan Liberg, too, have stepped into a strong leadership roles.

Johnson collected three hits in the two games with Clarkston and pitched five innings in the nightcap to take the loss. Wagner had a pair of hits in the first game and Liberg, who came in to pitch in relief of the first game, had two hits, including a double in the nightcap.

“We’re going to have to find a way to stay in this and hope that we’re improved by the time the playoffs roll around,” O’Neal said. “We can do that, but we’re going to have to work hard to get it done.”