Owyhee baseball needed a new hero to get back to 5A state finals. It found him Friday
Owyhee remains the last Treasure Valley team in the hunt for an Idaho 5A baseball state title after Friday’s semifinal round.
The defending state champs topped Mountain View 6-3, sending the second-year program back to the finals for the second straight year.
The 5A Southern Idaho Conference has won five straight state baseball championships. Owyhee will try to extend that streak to six years when it faces Lake City at 5 p.m. Saturday at Wolfe Field in Caldwell.
Lake City was the last team outside the Boise metro area to win a state title, doing so in 2016.
[Related: 5A to 1A baseball state tournament scores, brackets]
OWYHEE 6, MOUNTAIN VIEW 3: On a team loaded with college talent, Lucas Skinner often gets overlooked. But the Owyhee junior grabbed the spotlight Friday.
Skinner threw a no-hitter through five innings, silencing Mountain View’s lineup and sending the defending state champs back to the finals.
“It was almost like I was out of body,” Skinner said. “I just haven’t felt that before. It felt good.”
Skinner finished the night with the win, giving up three runs on three hits through 5 ⅓ innings in his longest outing of the season. No. 1-ranked Owyhee (22-4) hasn’t needed him to eat up innings with a deep pitching staff. But with the pitch count rule posing an obstacle to every team in a three-day tournament, Skinner picked the best time for his best outing of his high school career.
Owyhee coach Russ Wright noted that he threw only 8 ⅓ innings as a role player on last year’s state championship team. But even with all but one player returning, the Storm needed new players to step up to have any chance of defending their crown.
Skinner did just that.
“He didn’t hardly see innings for us last year,” Wright said. “He didn’t. We tried. And it just wasn’t there yet for him, although we saw the possibilities.
“And all summer, it was work, work, work, work — same thing. Work, work, work. And now you kind of see the fruition of all of that effort that he gave us.”
No. 4 Mountain View (16-12) broke up Skinner’s no-hitter in the sixth and quickly put a scare into the Storm. Cade Burnham chased Skinner from the hill with a two-run double down the left-field line. Owyhee’s first reliever, Hunter Mahaffey, then struggled with his command and gave up an RBI single to Evan Perry to make it a three-run game.
Sensing the game slipping away, Owyhee called in Gage Haws to stop the bleeding. He hit the first batter he faced, but recovered to strike out Jaxon Cron with the bases loaded.
Skinner caught the final 1 ⅓ innings for Haws as the battery duo switched positions to edge Mountain View in the semifinals for the second straight year.
“He was a little amped up,” Skinner said of Haws. “We were able to calm him down a little bit. But we just got him throwing hard, and no one can catch up to him.”
LAKE CITY 5, MIDDLETON 4: The Vikings took extra bases all season, continually pressuring opponents and forcing them to make plays. But Middleton ran into an opponent up to the challenge in the semifinals Friday.
No. 6 Lake City (21-6) made several highlight-reel defensive plays, and it cut down aggressive baserunners over and over again to continue its underdog run at the state tournament.
No. 2 Middleton (23-6) started the afternoon with four straight hits, setting the stage for an explosive offensive outing. But it turned those four hits into just a single run as Lake City catcher Cooper Smith gunned out a pair of would-be base stealers.
Timberwolves pitcher Nathan Weatherhead also silenced a potential rally with a pickoff in the fourth inning. And then right fielder Braeden Newby provided the highlight of the evening in the fifth.
Moments after Middleton’s Treyton Swygart made it 5-4 with a two-run double, Newby gunned down a runner at the plate trying to turn a shallow fly ball into a sacrifice fly, ending the threat with a double play from the outfield.
“They made the plays defensively, we ran into a couple of outs, and their pitcher got really good in the middle innings and mixed it up,” Middleton coach Bryan Swygart said. “Give them all the credit in the world. They deserved it. They made the plays.”
Joe DuCoeur powered the Lake City offense, ripping a two-run triple to center field in the third and adding an RBI single in the fourth. He finished 2-for-3, with an intentional walk in the sixth.
Despite winning the District One-Two title, Lake City entered the state tournament with limited fanfare. But the Timberwolves broke up the Southern Idaho Conference’s three-year stranglehold on the semifinals, and they became the first team outside of the Boise metro area to reach the finals since 2018.
EAGLE 11, TIMBERLINE 10: Ben Mortimer jumped on the first pitch he saw, sending a ground ball through the left side of the infield for the walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth inning in a consolation bracket game.
Mortimer also reached on an error in the bottom of the seventh inning that scored the tying run and sent the game to extra innings. He finished the day 2-for-6 with six RBIs.
Eagle (17-9) advances to face Highland (18-11) in the consolation finals at 10 a.m. Saturday. The loss ends Timberline’s season at 16-12 after back-to-back, walk-off losses in extra innings.
HIGHLAND 5, LEWISTON 4: Heads-up baserunning from Aiden Simpson extended the Rams’ season in a loser-out game.
With one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh, Highland’s Nick Ourada beat out the inning-ending and season-ending double play at first base. That allowed the tying run to cross home plate, and Simpson scored from second as no one covered home plate in the confusion.
