Routt seniors savor postseason success

When the seniors on the Routt baseball team were in the eighth grade, it was a forgone conclusion that the group would win a state championship just about every year once they reached high school.

But for the group that won a junior high state title that season in baseball, the state championships haven’t come.

The Rockets have come close to postseason success in baseball, basketball and football, only to be denied on a series of last-second plays, last-second shots, and the bad luck of having to face a future Big Ten Freshman of the Year.

“We could have gone further and could have advanced further and it was always like yeah, there’s another year. We’ll get them our junior year or we’ll get them our senior year,” said Devin Vaughn, one of seven seniors on this year’s baseball team. “But this is our last shot.”

The Routt seniors have led a charge through the Class 1A playoffs this season, and thanks to Monday’s 18-1 victory over South Fulton, the Rockets are heading to Joliet and the state tournament.

Routt (23-4) will play Granville Putnam County (19-8) in one semifinal Friday at 1 p.m. at Silver Cross Field in Joliet. If the Rockets win, they’ll play for the state title at noon Saturday.

The playoff run is due in large part to the seven seniors: Andrew Barber, Blake Davis, Scott Lindsey, Caleb Ruyle, Derek Sellers, Vaughn and Joe Zeller. Five of the seniors started in Monday’s super-sectional win, and the other two made pinch-hitting appearances.

“It just seems like yesterday when we were freshmen, excited to be playing, thinking we’ve got four years to play,” said Ruyle, the team’s starting third baseman. “As soon as we won the other day, Devin came up to me and shook my hand and said we’ve only got two games left, and it really didn’t sink in until then.”

This time around, the team will try to avoid the string of bad luck that has plagued recent Routt teams in postseason play.

The Routt seniors have seen their team lose on plays in the closing seconds in back-to-back seasons in football. The basketball team lost a regional game to Pittsfield on a last-second shot two years ago, and fell to rival West Central in a regional championship game this season after beating the Cougars twice during the regular season.

Last year’s baseball season ended when the Rockets lost to Virginia/A-C Central and Eric Jokisch, who went on to pitch for Northwestern University and was named the 2008 Big Ten Freshman of the Year.“I think as much as anything is some of those experiences they’ve had in the past, you know, having success in the regular season only to have it squelched in the postseason, I think that springboarded us into the postseason this year,” Routt baseball coach Bob Lonergan said. “I think they have a little more focus, and also the realization that this is it. They know they have to get their mark in history.

“They’ve had expectations because of the success they’ve had, only to have that goat tag pasted on them every year.”

The players don’t talk about the near-misses that much. They all keep the thought in the back of their minds, though, using it as motivation.
“It was real tough,” said Ruyle. “There are still days when I think about that Arcola loss (in the 2007 football playoffs), but having this super-sectional win and going to state, that kind of makes it feel a little better.”

Added Vaughn, “You’ve gotta remember how that feeling felt, and you’ve got to harness that and put it into a positive perspective.”
Lonergan, a Routt alum himself, had similar experiences playing for the Rockets. Lonergan was a member of Routt football teams that lost by a touchdown or less four postseasons in a row.

“We never lost a regular-season football game in my four years at Routt High School, so I understand the frustration of that happening. I’ve witnessed it,” Lonergan said. “I’ve followed Routt through my adult life and I’ve seen it happen to other teams, too.”
Hopefully, Lonergan said, this is the year the cycle is broken.

“I think we’re very capable of winning a state championship with this team,” the coach said. “I think it’s ours. I think if we go up there and play up to our ability, I think we can win it.”

The juniors, sophomores and freshmen that make up the rest of the Routt baseball team will be doing everything they can to make that happen this weekend.

“(The seniors) definitely deserve this I think,” said junior infielder Quinn Yording, who played up with the eighth-graders back in junior high. “They’re just all-around good guys and good athletes, and I think they deserve a state championship or at least some kind of hardware to prove their efforts.”

There’d be no better ending to a career than to walk away with a state title this weekend, the Routt seniors said.

“I remember when we won in eighth grade, it was a huge deal. We still talk about it now,” Ruyle said. “I think if we won a state title now, it would be the icing on the cake. All those tough losses, those would be distant memories. We could remember the state title instead.”