Homer High School baseball earned the school’s first ever state champion award at the Division II State Tournament at Coral Seymour Memorial Ballpark in Kenai last weekend. The Mariner’s beat Fairbanks’ Monroe Catholic in Friday’s semifinal game and Petersburg in the finals on Saturday afternoon. Coach Tyler Krekling spoke with KBBI about the games last weekend. Prior to the state meet, Homer Baseball won the regional championship meet, the first time they’ve won since 2005.
“Only four teams in baseball make it to state, and so we played Monroe Catholic, and we were down five to zero in the fifth inning…we came back and beat them with a score of six to five. That got us to the state championship game against Petersburg. In that game, we got down five to zero again in the last inning of the game. We scored five runs to tie the game, and then we won the very next inning six to five,” Krekling said.
The winning event and score was covered by KTUU, Alaska’s channel 2 News Source.
Brothers Ethan and Evan Pietsch shared these comments about the championship games:
“Baseball is not really all physical, it's mostly it's a lot of mental stuff, so it's a little dispiriting, like losing with a five run deficit, especially these last games, but I think the main thing to tell yourself is one pitch at a time, that's that's what I tell myself whenever we're going through like something hard like that,” Ethan Pietsch said.
“So, how did you guys make it back up?”
“I think just focus and refocusing and just not giving up, I think that's the biggest thing with our team, because we know we can win, obviously we prove that, but it's just about not giving, giving up, yeah, one pitch at a time..” Evan Pietsch said.
Team Captain, senior Clyde Clemens, who plans to attend a junior college in Esterville, Iowa next fall and then possibly transfer to a larger school, talked about his experience in baseball in Homer. “I’ve been playing ball since I could stand up. Dad put a bat in my hands and hit some rocks, and that's where it all started,” he said.
One of the most challenging issues the Mariner team faced this year was the condition of their practice field and inability to host home games. The majority of the mariner practices had to be held in the indoor high school gym. “Our field was so wet that before regions during the whole season we were only on our ball field one time to practice,” Krekling said.
Clemens referred to the field condition, also:
“It was hard not having a home game with our field not being ready for sure. It was almost like we were a little bit in limbo, like during that end of the season, because we were supposed to have three or four home games to close the season to go into regions and state. We got none of them. I think that that win against Kenai in regions to win the conference really kind of jump started us again, just being really able to play ball again and get a big win like that, that was that was big…”
Clyde Clemens scored the game winning run in the extra 8th inning to secure the school’s first ever baseball state championship.
In other Mariner spring sports:
Boys Soccer took 3rd at State
Girls Soccer took 5th at State
Boys Track took 3rd at State
Girls Track earned the State Champion title
Softball 4th at State
The team held a season barbeque and award ceremony on Monday evening above the Homer High School track.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
