Malad’s championship season can be traced back to a bad loss and how the team bounced back
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MALAD CITY — Usually, championship seasons can be traced back to one game, one performance that pushed the team toward its title. And more often than not, that singular performance, be it from an individual or the team as a whole, is a resoundingly positive one.
But this year’s 3A baseball state championship-winning Malad Dragons can trace their success to back-to-back losses in early April, according to head coach Jeff Snow.
After falling, first 8-0 to Clearfield (UT) then 8-1 to Marsh Valley, Malad’s record stood at a mediocre 4-4. It was the second of those defeats, an April 8 loss to the Eagles, though, that broke Snow. The first-year head coach said his team played scared.
“Marsh Valley thinks we’re weak,” the coach recalls telling his team, “and we were.”
Snow saw Malad play for the first time last year, and though he immediately identified serious potential, the shortcomings jumped off the field.
“I thought, for 16- and 17-year-old kids, they’re not hitting the ball hard. They’re just not making hard contact,” he told EastIdahoSports.com.
“There was a lack of toughness. … There was a mental toughness that just wasn’t there in Malad.”
That mental toughness, or lack thereof, was what really irked Snow in Marsh Valley. His team carried a mentality that it was good, unless they were playing a better team. And the Dragons played like it.
“That’s one, as a coach — I was pissed. I don’t know how to say it politely, I was one pissed off man. I felt like our team showed up scared to death,” Snow said. “I said, ‘This is not who we are. This is not what we’re about. This is not what we’re going to stand for. If I can’t find kids who will play, I’ll go find freshman.’ I ripped into them pretty good — maybe too hard.”
The following day, at practice, a much calmer Snow again broached the topic of mental toughness. And though he believes he was notably more laxed, he was equally blunt about what he believed to have been his team quitting.
His team immediately responded.
Over the next 11 days, the Dragons went 10-0, outscoring their opponents 115 to 13.
Snow called the loss at Marsh Valley the “turning point” of his team’s season. But still, they were missing out on some opportunities.
Among the 10-game winning streak was a 16-0 victory at Soda Springs. Malad left 10 men on base in that game, something that, despite the one-sided victory, left Snow with a bad taste in his mouth.
“We just weren’t clicking yet,” Snow recently said about his offense in that game — and, perhaps unbelievably given the streak of dominance, up to that point in the season.
RELATED | Malad runs all over Soda Springs to earn conference win behind stout Howe
Following the loss at Marsh Valley, Malad finished the regular season on a 21-2 run, with their losses coming at the hands of another Utah team — Bear River — and that same Marsh Valley squad.
But there was a huge difference between the two matchups with the Eagles.
The second time around, Malad was competitive. They battled, and actually led, 5-3, after three full innings. In fact, Snow believes that had he used his top two pitchers, Brycen Howe and Brady Showell, Malad may have been able to pull off the upset. And that is no knock on that day’s starter, junior Kurt Ward, but rather a nod to Marsh Valley and head coach Kent Howell, both of which Snow hold in very high regard.
Snow, for a brief moment, considered using Howe — who finished the season among the top pitchers in the state, with a 1.46 ERA (17th in the state) and 78 strikeouts (17th). But with the district tournament opening just two days after that game, the skipper decided to hold his pair of aces for the playoffs.
Still, he said, something clicked for his team, and he suddenly saw that they knew they could compete with anyone.
“I saw something out of our team that sparked — they saw that they could compete. We saw and they felt a good team, kind of, clinch up,” he said, noting how that realization propelled them down the stretch. “That was the final piece of that puzzle.”
Falling to the Eagles triggered another impressive Malad winning streak. The Dragons won their final nine games, going 3-0 in the district tournament, 3-0 in the super-regional round and 3-0 in the Baseball State Championship.
RELATED | Malad takes super-regional opener behind dominant Howe
Snow said he is “so proud” of his team’s 9-0 run through the postseason: “That’s hard to do.”
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“There was some really good talent that we faced at state,” he added. “No one thought we were going to compete — I mean, no one did. To go and win those, 3-0, and to be down in some of those games, our kids just never quit.”
The pitching, behind Howe and Showell, was as strong as ever. But it was the offense that may have impressed even more.
Malad averaged eight runs per game between the super-regional and state tournaments, against some of the best pitching the state had to offer.
And the championship game proved to be, what Snow called, “icing on the cake.”
The goal all season had been to dominate offensively in the strikeout-to-walk ratio (K:BB). Facing Nampa Christian, with a banner and blue trophy on the line, the Dragons combined for eight runs on seven hits and six walks, with zero strikeouts — something that Snow had pointed out to him on the bus ride from Nampa back to Malad.
“It stopped me,” he said. “I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ Not one strikeout in that championship game — that, to me, was the epitome of where we were trying to get to that entire season.”
Snow singled out junior Cale Briggs as a player who put in the time and effort to improve offensively — to avoid strikeouts and make solid contact, even if it resulted in an out — as the personification of what the entire team did over the course of the season.
Briggs has since been named the 3A Tournament MVP.
Malad will lose seniors Howe, Showell and shortstop Carter Blaisdell.
But, while he says he is not one for making projections, Snow believes his team will have all the tools it needs to compete again next year — and that will start with a couple names area baseball fans might recognize (for different reasons).
Carter Carey will be a senior, and in addition to coming up with clutch hits all season, Snow believes he is among the top two or three catchers in the state. And Dawsyn Peterson, just a sophomore, would have started for the varsity squad had it not been for Blaisdell.
RELATED | Malad’s Peterson finishes record-setting career with another dominant season
Snow believes that Peterson, the younger brother of softball superstar Riglee Peterson, will be among the state’s top players to watch in the coming years.
Add the continued growth of Carey to the emergence of Peterson, along with some of the other returning contributors, and Snow may be in the hunt for a second trophy in as many years as a coach.
“We’re missing a few pieces for sure — it’s pitching … but we’re going to develop some kids that are going to give us a chance to compete,” Snow said. “So I do think, our chances — I think we’ve got a good chance.”