Cascade baseball to face Okanogan in district playoffs

The Cascade Kodiak baseball team finished up the regular season taking a couple forfeits from Omak, which was not able to field a team for any of their games against Cascade this season. As it turns out, the only notches in the win column for the Kodiaks in league were those three forfeits to Omak.
The Caribou Trail League was fairly top heavy with Cashmere, Chelan and Okanogan. Cashmere was the outright champ at 11-1, but Chelan snuck into the number two spot in the last week with a key win over Okanogan. Both those teams were 8-4. Cascade was 3-9 and Omak was 0-12.
Cascade Head Coach Mike Kelly was disappointed his team could not play Omak last week.
“It really couldn’t be any worse. Because they are league games, they count against our 20 game match, so I can’t replace those with replacement games. They are just forfeited games. Not having three games in the season was unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Kelly said.
Kelly would have liked to have those games to tune up for Districts.
“I think that is six or seven more at-bats for each of the kids and 10-14 innings of pitching and three games worth of team chemistry. For all the above, it’s unfortunate we didn’t get those games,” Kelly said.
The only game Cascade did play last week was at Chelan on May 4. Junior southpaw Conrad Hasse retired the first two batters, but then ran into trouble, giving up five runs. Kelly had to replace him before the end of the first with TJ Thompson-just to get the final out.
“We were in a 5-1 hole after one and ended up losing the game 8-2. TJ did excellent over the next 6 innings. They are extremely strong this year with Cashmere, Chelan and Okanogan. All three are very good. Take away that first inning, like most games this season, it is a contested ball game,” Kely said. “I was excited the way the guys kept fighting and battling. It was good ball game after that.”
Kelly said he wasn’t surprised Chelan snuck into that number two seed.
“They have been playing really well. They beat a great Brewster team last week. Beat Okanogan 5-4. They got the series win over Okanogan. I would liked for our guys to be more involved with that battle on top. We just weren’t this year,” Kelly said. “We will certainly be next year. All three of those teams are talented in different ways. Cashmere has a senior dominated lineup with a bunch of confidence. They have a couple high quality high school 1A arms. Chelan is mostly juniors, playing well together.”
With Okanogan dropping to third, that means Cascade must play Okanogan on Thursday in Ephrata in a loser out district game. Cascade lost to Okanogan this season, 7-5, 11-5 and 9-1.
“I’m excited. I don’t care who we play. I know that is what coach’s say, but whether it is Okanogan, Chelan or Cashmere, our guys are right there. We’re ready to break through. It could be this game,” Kelly said. “We are absolutely led by our young guys, TJ, Mason Kelly had two hits and played outstanding defense. Ben Sunitsch was outstanding, throwing out a couple runners. Those three are sophomores. They are the leaders of our team. They are doing it they way they are playing.”
Kelly said he’s excited to see what his team can do against Okanogan.
“All the games have been competitive except for the big inning. If we can minimize that, we can compete,” Kelly said. “If we win that game, we’re automatically into the crossover. We have the chance to continue on and back to the state tournament, where we lived for so long.”
The only reason the district games are in Ephrata is because league coaches did not like Cashmere always hosting the tournament, feeling it was too much of an advantage. Kelly did not agree with the decision to move the games to Ephrata.
“It doesn’t make any sense why the decision was made to move the game to Ephrata so the one seed doesn’t have the advantage. But why not? Why shouldn’t the one seed have home field advantage? That’s the way it’s always been,” Kelly said. “It doesn’t matter for us. We’re not carrying around a tremendous fan base at 7-13. It doesn’t really affect us greatly.”
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.