By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
With the baseball season less than two weeks from the regional tournament, the Sitka High Wolves faced Thunder Mountain High three times over the weekend in Juneau, winning twice and losing once. In the opening game of the series Friday, Sitka won 6-4, but the Falcons came back on Saturday, beating the Wolves 9-8.
With the series tied at the start of the third game, Sitka’s Nik Calhoun stepped up to pitch in the final game.
“Pretty good, I was having fun up there, that’s what it was… All my pitches felt pretty good, it was working out,” Calhoun told the Sentinel at practice Monday. “So I was just having fun with it, my curve ball was working really well, and the knuckle ball was working really well… Watching it work, it was nice.”
Sitka won the final match in a blowout 14-1, and Calhoun threw the Wolves’ first one-hitter of the season.
In some innings, Thunder Mountain’s batters struck out one after the other, which granted Sitka a great deal of momentum.
“There were a couple of one, two, three innings where only a couple of their batters went up and we got outs really quick. So that helped us and brought them down a little bit. That sucks, I’ve had that happen before,” Calhoun recalled.
Thinking back on the game, he said the team as a whole enjoyed the experience.
“Everyone was having fun, because we were pretty much able to hit for a while, go out in the field, get a couple outs real quick and then go back and hit,” Calhoun said.
Coach Ken Carley was impressed.
“Everything he had was on, he had control. All his pitches were going to hit where he was aiming. It’s impressive to watch as a coach,” Carley said.
While the first two games were tight, Carley said that in the third, Sitka excelled in part because the Wolves played proper defense.
“We played defense. (In the first game) they had one earned run out of the four. In that eight-to-nine game, it was one earned run. So we gave them eight runs there,” the coach said. In the first two games, the coach said, most of the Falcons’ runs were the result of Sitka errors.
Solid defense combined with Calhoun’s pitching arm shut down Thunder Mountain in the third, 14-1, game.
For Sitka freshman Grady Smith, it took some time to adjust when he stepped up to pitch in the second game.
“At the beginning I was definitely on my heels a little bit, I was a little nervous. But as the game went on I got into the groove a little bit and located my stuff and felt good,” Grady said. “I definitely was not ready when I first started pitching.”
After pitching the full seven innings, Smith noted that his shoulder remained sore on Monday.
“My arm was honestly hurting in the first inning and I went on to pitch six more. I had 102 pitches. I wasn’t feeling too bad, but to this day my arm is still sore,” he said.
On his baseball cap, Smith wore a small decorative flower taken from a coffee cup. He said that he plans to wear it for the remainder of the season.
“I had a coffee and they put a flower over the thing so it would stay warm. So I put it on my hat until we make it, until the season is over,” he said.
The Wolves play Juneau at home this week in the final tournament prior to the regional games. The schedule is below. While Region V was slated to take place in Ketchikan this year, that’s no longer the case due to a dramatic coronavirus spike there.
The tournament is now set for the last weekend of May at Moller Park in Sitka.
“It’s a huge advantage for us; we’re not going to be tired. We get to sleep in our own beds,” Carley said.
