Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
ColtStraughanWin
They stepped back up into the charter bus that took them to the state championship game in Centralia and asked the coach where they were going to dinner.
"Anywhere in the state you want to go," he said.
"Red Robin," came the answer, so the nearest one was located – 30 miles up Interstate 5 in Olympia.
Once there, the team brought their 2014 1B Washington state high school baseball trophy inside the packed restaurant and placed it at the center of their table.
It was a celebration earned by a 2-1 win over Oakville that Saturday afternoon at Centralia Community College.
"Men of different ages who had played any and all levels of baseball came up and asked the kids what they won and who they beat," said Colton coach Pat Doumit, who added the 2014 championship to the 2012 for the seventh-year coach.
For Colton players, a group of four seniors led the way all season and all year: Jake Straughan, Dalton Patchen, Jordan Druffel and Levi Webber, who made for the first year that Colton High School placed in state in all three sports: fifth in football, first in basketball and first in baseball.
"I think our guys, I think there was more of a feeling of being relaxed," said Doumit, comparing them to the 2012 team. "Nobody had won anything yet then."
Straughan, in particular, was key in the title game, pitching all seven innings, holding Oakville to one run and delivering the game-winning two-RBI double in the bottom of the fifth.
It was a signature finish for a senior year that included football season ending for him on a cold bench in Clarkston with a broken bone in his leg and his main sport of basketball just days away. Eventually, after a slow return to the basketball team, him and the Wildcats got back to form at the end of the season to play for and win the state championship in Spokane.
Against Oakville for the baseball title, Straughan pitched the whole game, escaping a quick, three-consecutive hit, bases-loaded first inning to keep Colton within 1-0 going into the fifth.
After the first inning, Oakville didn’t get a runner past first base.
Austin Meyer, a junior, caught the whole game.
"He does a tremendous job back there," Doumit said.
Before the day began, the coach had to decide who to give the ball to on the mound; Straughan or Dalton Patchen, a less-experienced senior who shined through the season and in the playoffs.
"Jake had been our No. 1 since the beginning of the year and he did nothing to change that," Doumit said.
On the mound at Centralia, Straughan tried to listen to Doumit yelling at him from the dugout but they couldn’t hear each other.
"That was the loudest baseball game I’ve ever coached in," Doumit said, citing the crowd for both sides in the community-college bleachers. "We could play a game on an island in the middle of an ocean and our fans would find a way to dock out there."
Oakville is just 15 miles from Centralia.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, with Colton down 1-0, Austin Meyer hit a double followed by a base hit from Carter Dahmen to rightfield. Oakville tried to throw out Meyer at third, allowing Dahmen to take second.
Straughan then came up and hit a one-hop double off of the outfield wall in left center to score both Meyer and Dahmen, giving the Wildcats the lead, 2-1.
In the sixth, Oakville managed another runner on first but got no further.
With Straughan on the mound again in the seventh, he struck out the first batter, struck out the second, walked the third and struck out the last.
"The personalities, these are kind of my guys," Doumit said of the four graduating seniors, three of whom he taught as seventh-graders at Guardian Angel of St. Boniface in Colton.
He remembers a writing assignment then in which Straughan wrote about a kid who gets into high school and starts winning a bunch of state championships.
"You could tell he wanted that to be his autobiography," Doumit said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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