I was on the baseball team once. We didn’t have a good season, but there was one team that beat us so badly that all we could really ask was “Why don’t they just move up a division?”
On Monday, April 27, and the Friday before, the Cavs played that team: Valley Christian.
While the Cavs’ great record was encouraging, unfortunately, not much has changed. The Cavs will still lose every game against Valley Christian, and VC still needs to be moved up a division.
The first game, in Roseville on April 24, ended in a shutout, 0-8.
“It was actually 0-0 for a while, and then they switched guys and started scoring – a lot, ” senior Jaspreet Gill said. “We then realized that we weren’t even playing their best guys. By that time we knew it was pretty much over.”
Friday was an uphill battle to be sure. According to senior Skovran Cunningham, the skill gap was just too large to overcome.
“They have a team full of players,” Cunningham said. “I mean, most of their guys play travel ball, and (freshman) Miles (Edwards) is the only one on our team that plays baseball at all outside of school.”
Monday’s game was scarcely better. While the Cavs did score (thus preventing a shutout), VC increased their score from eight to 15.
However, Cunningham said, this heavier loss was due (in part) to planning on the part of the Cavs, who decided to save their best pitchers for the next game against Buckingham – a game that the Cavs think they can win.
“If we win our game against Buckingham, we get to go to the playoffs,” Cunningham said. “We saved our best guys and pitched some of our less-experienced people.”
However, Gill said a major reason that the team lost by such a large margin was a lack of morale.
“We gave up,” Gill said. “It just didn’t seem like we would win, and the these guys were so much better than us.
“They didn’t even bring their whole team this time. They didn’t need it.”
To state the obvious, losses are hard. Especially when you know the loss is coming and there’s not much you can do to avoid it.
“We expected the game to be very challenging, and when we were down, we stayed down instead of fighting back,” senior Keegan Crain said.
“They’re the best team we have played and probably will play. We were already down so many runs that we didn’t have the heart to come back from it.”
However, there’s a silver lining to all of this pain and suffering. The pitchers are rested and ready for Buckingham.
