It is said home is where the heart is and it is also the place where the Wood River and Minico baseball teams have had the most success this season.
Wood River is 10-0 at Founder's Field this season and Minico is equally flawless when it comes to playing the Wolverines at Warburton Field in Rupert.
In the championship game of the Great Basin Conference West tournament, hometown Minico defeated Wood River 9-4 Tuesday to clinch the district title and an automatic berth in the State 4A tournament, May 19-21 in Boise.
Wood River (20-8) can join Minico (20-7) at state but must win two play-in games to attend, the first of which was played yesterday against Preston (16-12) in Rupert. The winner of Preston—Wood River will duel the Sixth District (Idaho Falls area) tournament runner-up at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Pocatello's Halliwell Field Saturday. The winner advances to state.
"Hopefully, we'll get there and see how it goes," coach Lars Hovey remarked. "It will be interesting to see how we come back from the loss to Minico."
The pressure was all on the Wolverines on Tuesday. Not only did they need two victories to upset Minico; the Spartans have been a puzzle Hailey has not been able to piece out this season.
In the last five weeks the teams have played four times. Minico has taken three of the matchups by scores of 11-3, 8-3 and 9-4. Hailey won once, 6-5 in eight innings, at Founder's Field on May 2.
"They are one of the top teams in the state -- if not the top team in the state," Hovey remarked. "They are extremely consistent and do the small things well.
"Hopefully (the loss) doesn't break our spirit too much where we don't see ourselves as one of those upper echelon teams."
Despite the Wolverines' talent, Tuesday's game did not pan out according to plan.
Hovey went with righthander Ted Dankanyin (1-2) reasoning that Minico had not see the senior this season and he could put a strong defense behind him with Tyler Theide and Tyson Reynoso at the infield corners and Steve Hansen in the outfield.
"We had the opposite of what we wanted to happen," Hovey said. "We figured the longer we could stay in it the better our chances. It is not the way it panned out."
Minico was hot from the outset, scoring three runs in the first, two in the second and four in the third to put the Wolverines in a 9-nothing hole.
"We gave them some walks (7 base on balls in the first three frames and 9 altogether), they had a couple of big hits. We also committed a few errors (3) and dropped a couple of fly balls. We gave them three or four bases which you can't do against a quality team," Hovey said.
#3 hitter Cory Warburton, who notched the win on the mound, stroked a two-RBI single in the third and scored three runs. Leadoff batter McCoy Worthington was 2-for-2 with two runs scored.
Wood River was not without its chances but could not open the door when opportunity knocked.
The Wolverines stranded six base runners and twice had men on first and second with no outs but base running mistakes and inning-ending double plays stifled potential rallies.
"We took ourselves out of innings. We didn't capitalize on errors and they did," Hovey said.
That was not the case in the fourth frame. Reynoso was hit by a pitch and Theide (2 hits) belted a homerun over the left field fence to put Wood River on the scoreboard.
Dylan Fullmer reached on an infield error and Ben Molyneux drew a walk to set the table for leadoff hitter Morgan Uhrig (2 hits), who promptly delivered a two-RBI single to cut the lead to five. A pickoff play at first ended the rally.
"We had the momentum," Hovey remarked. "Warburton was losing his composure and Tyler Theide came in in the fourth and shut them down."
Theide tossed three innings of scoreless no-hit ball, but the Wolverines could not overcome their earlier mistakes.
"We lost our chance with the base running errors and the dropped balls," Hovey said. "Three or four runs here and there don't seem like a lot until you try and make a game of it."
Which is exactly what the Wolverines will try and do over the next three days—given the chance.
