It’ll be a battle of the top two seeds for the Class 6A baseball championship on Saturday at noon at Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer. A matchup of high prestige and, coincidentally, the last two state champions.
No. 1 West Linn (25-6) won the 2022 state title under coach Joe Monahan, and are headed for a repeat trip on Tuesday after downing No. 4 Lake Oswego 6-4.
Meanwhile, No. 2 Jesuit (26-5) was crowned champion back in 2019 (before COVID-19 stunted the state’s ability to hold tournaments in both the 2020 and 2021 seasons). The Crusaders are back at the precipice, themselves, after a 4-2 win over No. 6 North Medford Tuesday — a representative token of both team’s vastly different routes to the 2023 title.
Dissimilar to their Lion counterparts, the Crusaders aren’t riding any residual momentum of a deep 2022 run into Saturday’s matchup. Still harboring the pressure of the 2019 title, and in search of perfection, Jesuit was upset in the second round of last year’s state tournament in a 5-1 loss to Lake Oswego. It stung. The Crusaders were angry. And a team whose top-end talent and perennial success would seemingly deem them unfit of any underdog chatter entered this season with redemption on its mind.
But asked of his team’s “revenge tour” ahead of Saturday’s title bout, Jesuit coach Colin Griffin was defiant: the Crusaders aren’t in that mode anymore. They’ve gotten back to the state championship game, the place what was so often discussed throughout the offseason. Now they have a chance to prove that all the raw emotion was valid.
“They know there’s something special on the field,” Griffin said. “And they know it’s even more special off the field together. It’s worked well with their motivation to keep playing.”
Monahan, in possession of some fresh perspective after last season’s title, will tell you there are plenty of differences between the Lions of a year ago, and present, too, even if the throughline of chasing state titles hasn’t budged an inch. Last year’s West Linn team came together late. Belief mounted with every series sweep and subsequent playoff victory. But this go-round, that confidence was omnipresent even in the earliest of stages.
“This team always acts like they haven’t won a title,” Monahan said. “They’ve stayed just as hungry, just as focused, as I’ve ever seen from a team early on.”
And it would have been easy for the Lions to spend the season acting with overconfidence. Last season’s state championship win against Canby — a 14-0 win in five innings — was the most lopsided big school state championship game in history.
Without the immediacy of a title run to bank on in leading the way back to this point for Jesuit, Griffin’s firmest focus surrounding this team was to better prepare them for the depths of postseason ball. He felt he’d let them down in that aspect last season, that Lake Oswego had caught them off guard. It was unacceptable, he said, and largely fell on his own shoulders.
Before the season began, Griffin worked to foster a team-to-team relationship between his players and the school’s girl’s basketball team — who earned the state’s top seed entering the basketball state tournament. They frequented games, helping support the team. He wanted his boys to soak that atmosphere in, to observe the frenetic pace their peers on the hardwood played at. Most of all, he wanted them to want it for themselves.
Here on the doorstep of the state title, Griffin believes it made a difference. The gauntlet the Crusaders faced in their early-season North Carolina tournament didn’t hurt either. And with a deep senior class and the state’s deadliest collection of arms (led by Noble Meyer, the No. 16 2023 prospect, according to MLB.com), Griffin would like to think he’s done his best to position his Jesuit program.
“There’s not much more coaching we can do,” he said.
As Griffin hustled behind the scenes to better prepare his team in the intangibles department, Monahan was busy worrying about roster construction in the early going. He knew they’d be fine in the pitching department (the Lions returned three of their four top arms), but needed to bolster the middle infield after graduating key members.
Junior Mitchell Rowe earned the starting shortstop position half way through the season; Danny Wideman, a sophomore and first team all-state outfielder split time between the infield and the outfield, while hitting a team-best .447; and Tyson Smith, a senior, who was merely a bench player last year, slotted in at second and turned in a first team all-league season.
Suddenly, a defense with a proverbial hole down the middle, one which Monahan said struggled with fundamentals, became a strength of the team. And in a title game where talented arms on both sides could render hits exceptionally elusive, air-tight defense may not be preferred, rather required.
West Linn has shut out six of its last 10 opponents, including the playoffs, where the Lions have allowed just five runs, to Jesuit’s seven.
On one side is a team whose unwavering approach has propelled them back to the edge of a two-peat — which has never been done at the 6A level and hasn’t occurred at the state’s top classification since Madison in 1969 and1970 (then a single-A team). On the other, a program unafraid to switch things up despite recent, prolonged success, the adjustments and mindset of which have them hunting their third title of the 21st century.
“Our goal is always the same,” Monahan said. “We play for June.”
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