Craig Culver is a mild-mannered art teacher at Bear Lake High School in Montpelier but he turns into something of a super-hero when he's coaching the highly successful Bear Lake baseball teams.
Bear Lake boys, almost predominantly LDS, respond instinctively to Culver, a non-Mormon. He talks their language—tradition, passing down lessons from seniors to freshmen, small ball, scoring runs here and there until games are finally, quietly done and won.
"Our goal is to score one run in every inning," said Culver. "And many times one run turns into more than one run."
Laramie (Wyo.) product Culver, 37, was a righthanded pitcher starting at York (Neb.) Junior College in 1988 and finishing up at the University of Wyoming pitcher from 1990-93. He had two shoulder surgeries and has coached Bear Lake high school and American Legion baseball teams since 1995.
He puts in a lot of time, time spent away from his wife Danielle and his five-year-old son and one-year-old daughter.
For instance, during the many idle hours of a baseball season, Culver was thinking this year that he had coached senior players like Rob Smith and Keith Cook in about 350 baseball games since the summer after their seventh grade.
And what a great finish they had to their baseball careers!
On Aug. 6, completing their first-ever visit to the Idaho State American Legion baseball tournament on a high note, Culver's Bears won the four-day, eight-team tournament at Hailey's Founders Field with a 10-7 victory over defending champion Mountain Home. Wood River's Legion squad coached by Matt Nelson finished third in the state meet.
Bear Lake then completed a 37-14 campaign Aug. 21 by winning the American Legion Northwest Class A Regional Tournament at Mulcahy Stadium in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Bears, two-time Idaho 3A state high school baseball champions, won five of their six games at Anchorage by a combined 69-38 score behind co-Most Valuable Players Keith Cook and Cameron Crane and catcher Rob Smith, now playing baseball for Eastern Utah.
They had also cleaned up at the State Legion "A" tournament in Hailey, winning all four of their games by a 47-17 margin. About the only slip the Bears had in their 15-game post-season tournament run was a 17-9 loss to eventual Area C "A" district champion Blackfoot back on July 27 in Pocatello. In all, the Bears won 13 of 15 post-season games and outscored opponents 157-82.
All this, from a small high school that has fewer than 300 students in grades 10-12. "This is Hoosiers-type stuff," Culver likes saying, with good reason.
Coach Culver would also be the first to say that the Bears had plenty of support achieving their goals. Once Bear Lake qualified for regionals, the Idaho American Legion supplied the Bears with 20 round-trip air tickets from Seattle to Anchorage, and also paid for a 15-passenger rental van plus $6,000 in traveling expenses.
"That covered just about everything," said Culver.
In addition to receiving financial help for the trip to Alaska from the Idaho American Legion, the Bears raised $8,500 in their generous southeastern Idaho community for their trips to state and regionals tournaments. They had a radio telethon and pancake dinner to raise the money.
The extra money enabled Culver to give his players $20 in meal expenses each day, always a nice perk for young players in the baseball bushes.
But you don't take 16 teenage players from Bear Lake to Alaska without asking the kids to assume a lot of responsibility for their actions. Culver, also an assistant football coach at Bear Lake, had to make the trip himself, since his assistant coach was needed for mid-August football obligations.
Bear Lake players stayed in the resort area of Girdwood, about 40 miles from Anchorage. The four seniors—center fielder Trent Alleman, third baseman Keith Cook, catcher Rob smith and first baseman/pitcher Cameron Crane—made sure things were under control in the living quarters, Culver said. Once they drove down the hill to Anchorage, they were itching to achieve.
Culver said, "We were focused and ready to play baseball. Our defense was strong. Our goal is always to score one run in every inning and we always play a lot of small ball. But once we got to sea level it seemed like we were crushing balls at regionals."
Bear Lake opened its regional quest Friday, Aug. 17 with an 18-0 shutout of South Anchorage in a game shortened to seven innings because of the run rule. Northwest "A" regional tournament games were played in a nine-inning format.
Cameron Crane pitched the first four innings and sophomore righthander Jordan Crane mopped up for the Bears.
Righthander Nathan Crane (Cameron's brother, while Jordan Crane is no relation) threw a nine-inning complete game as Bear Lake jumped up on the Richland (Wash.) Nights and prevailed 9-7 Saturday, Aug. 18.
An interesting situation came up Sunday, Aug. 19 when Bear Lake played the Utah Box Elder Bees from Brigham City.
Culver said his Bears are 100% LDS and had voted as a team during post-season competition whether to play on Sundays. Two players had expressed reservations including third baseman and leading hitter Keith Cook. Cook batted .542 in the Legion season and was at .602 in the state championship high school season, an average that included 39 walks.
For instance, Cook hadn't played when Bear Lake played defending Idaho State "A" champion Mountain Home in the Sunday semi-final game at Hailey's Founders Field back on Aug. 5. Bear Lake took an early 7-1 lead in that game and nipped Mountain Home 7-6.
Brigham City was also 100% LDS, Culver said, and apparently decided to run out its entire team against Bear Lake in the Sunday game at regionals. Once again, Cook didn't play.
Utah Box Elder prevailed 13-5 over the Bears, although it was a close 5-4 game through five innings with catcher Smith taking a turn throwing on the Bears mound. "They had a big inning and ran away with it," said Culver about the loss.
Bear Lake bounced back Monday, Aug. 20 with a 21-8 rout of the Wheatland (Wyo.) Lobos, a team that had beaten the Bears in the first week of the American Legion season.
Meanwhile, Utah's Box Elder Bees went flat in an 11-0 loss to the Ashland (Ore.) Pilots Monday and had to reflect on that drubbing while the Brigham City boys waited for Bear Lake and Ashland to decide who was going to play the Bees in Tuesday's title game.
That Bear Lake-Ashland game happened at noon Tuesday, Aug. 21—Culver sending Cameron Crane to the mound on three days rest to battle Ashland's Pilots. And battle he did, turning back the Oregon state champion 10-5 with a nine-inning complete-game effort.
"We just crushed the ball," said Culver.
It came down to one nine-inning barnbuner to determine the regional champion and it was a thriller. Culver started righty Nathan Crane, the crafty control ace who had whipped Wood River 10-3 back on Aug. 4 at Founders Field with an extremely effective 93-pitch, eight-hit complete-game effort.
Nathan Crane epitomized Bear Lake's staff. Culver said, "Our pitching wasn't overpowering but we don't walk people and we hit the spots."
Bear Lake, batting .400 as a team at regionals, operated in its usual manner against Brigham City—jumping out to the early lead. Smith cracked a homer and Cook drove home two runs as the Bears built 4-0 and 6-3 cushions. But the Box Elder Bees saved one last rally.
Nathan Crane ran into trouble, looked behind him and found the bases loaded with Bees and just one out in the eighth inning of a 6-5 game. Coming up was Utah's clean-up hitter. Culver consulted with Cameron Crane, who told the coach he still had some gas in the tank after throwing the nine innings against Ashland just two hours before.
Culver said, "Cameron told me he hadn't cramped up and was ready to go."
In came Cameron Crane, who whiffed Utah's clean-up hitter and enticed a pop-out from the #5 batter and then retired the Bees 1-2-3 in the ninth giving Bear Lake the regional tournament victory.
Culver said Bear Lake became only the third Idaho team to win the Legion regional baseball tournament, coming on the heels of Pocatello in 1985 and Burley during the 1990s.
Besides his team's senior leadership in 2007, Culver said Bear Lake's success in Gem State high school baseball has been the main thing driving the program in what he calls a "baseball community."
In the last two State 3A high school baseball tournaments, Bear Lake is 6-0 and has outscored opponents 46-13 and has been sorely tested only once--that being in the 2006 state semi-final game when Bear Lake rallied past Buhl 12-10 on a three-run walk-off homer by Rob Smith (6 RBI for the game).
They have beaten Kimberly 4-1 in this year's state championship game and Fruitland 5-0 in the 2006 final state contest.
Here are the regional tournament scores by day:
Friday, Aug. 17: Bear Lake 18-0 over South Anchorage; Utah Box Elder Bees 12-3 over Fairbanks (Ak.) 49ers; Richland (Wash.) Knights 5-2 over Wheatland (Wyo.) Lobos; and Mission Valley (Mont.) 10-7 over Ashland (Ore.) Pilots.
Saturday, Aug. 18: Bear Lake 9-7 over the Richland Knights; Utah Box Elder Bees 7-3 over Mission Valley; Wheatland Lobos 16-3 over South Anchorage; and Ashland 21-3 over the Fairbanks 49ers.
Sunday, Aug. 19: Utah Box Elder Bees 13-5 over Bear Lake; Ashland Pilots 8-4 over Richland Knights; and Wheatland Lobos 6-4 over Mission Valley.
Monday, Aug. 20: Bear Lake 21-8 over Wheatland Lobos; and Ashland Pilots 11-0 over Utah Box Elder Bees.
Tuesday, Aug. 21: Bear Lake 10-5 over Ashland Pilots in the semi-final; Bear Lake 6-5 over Utah Box Elder Bees in the championship game.
The two Alaska teams in the eight-team field went 0-4 and were outscored 67-9, but "A" players in Alaska are up to 17 years old while players from the other six states were generally older, up to 19 years old.
