Even if the Oregon club baseball team did fall short of its ultimate goal, the past season was certainly one to remember.
After a rain-soaked sweep of Montana in West Linn, Ore., the Ducks started their conference schedule on the wrong foot, dropping two of three to a pitching-heavy Seattle Redhawks team.
“We were a little distraught,” pitcher and club coordinator Jonathan Jwayad said. “The year before we handled Seattle well. But I think the combination of the first series in Eugene and a tall infield grass gave us a rough start.”
Things picked up quickly from that point, though, as a motivated Ducks squad stormed through the next month, winning 15 of the next 17 ballgames.
Included in that stretch was a four-game sweep of Western Washington at Civic Stadium, marking their first sweep of a conference opponent (although the games did not count toward the conference standings) of the season.
If the Ducks needed to point to the series that best showcased their versatility, this was the one. They won with their bats, holding off the Vikings 14-13 in game one and bailing out starter Jay Tlougan after a subpar effort. They won with their arms, using stellar efforts from stalwart starters Bryan Hansen and Jwayad and a sizzling debut from lefty Evan Coller, who had been sidelined for the first half of the season with an injury to his non-throwing arm.
The series was a major turning point in the season for this Ducks team.
“That series set the tone for the rest of the year,” Jwayad said. “It was our first series at Civic Stadium in front of a decent-sized crowd, and we beat Western in four games, which hasn’t been done in the past. We knew that if we played at the top of the game or we played our style of baseball, when it came around to the league series in Bellingham, we could take care of them.”
One thing about the 2007 Ducks is they were young, very young.
Seventeen of the team’s 24 members were either freshmen or sophomores, including the entire starting outfield of rightfielder Corey Johnson, centerfielder Quentin Clark and leftfielder Cam Gaulke. Early in the year, the younger players may have been intimidated by the atmosphere, but by the end of the year, Jwayad says, they were just as solid as the upperclassmen.
After the sweep of Western Washington, the Ducks went on the road to California and Washington to play the rest of the year, minus a thrashing of Evergreen State in Eugene.
The Ducks thrived on the road, winning five of seven contests, including two more games against Western Washington, this time in Bellingham, Wash.
Oregon’s win in the final game of the year against Western landed the team a berth at Regionals and set the mood for the rest of the year. They had won with their backs against the wall and would continue to do the rest of the way.
“That was the birth of Oregon baseball against the wall,” Jwayad said. “It was, ‘We have to win, or we’re not going to go to the playoffs’ and then going into the second game of Regionals knowing we have to win or we’re not going to continue.”
Oregon dropped its first game to Weber State, and now faced a gut-check: one more loss and the season would be over. The Ducks needed to win.
And win is exactly what they did, defeating Idaho State and Seattle to advance to the finals and beating Weber State twice, the last victory sealed by a Bryan Hansen walk-off home run, and advancing to the National Club Baseball Association World Series in Fort Myers, Fla.
At the World Series, Oregon advanced to the title game, but had to travel a long road to get there.
The Ducks downed the No. 1-seed Penn State Nittany Lions and ace Peter Chalfin twice and sent the three-time defending champion Colorado State Rams to the loser’s bracket with a 4-0 shutout victory.
In the championship game against the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Ducks, solid for the entire Series, cracked. They made four fielding errors which led to three unearned runs and an eventual 8-6 season-ending loss.
Despite the sour ending, the team made great strides from the team that had trouble early in the season against Seattle, to scoring 77 runs in three games against Evergreen State to coming one win short of a national title. If everything stays in place, this group of Ducks could be making headlines for years to come.
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