Napa Valley Baseball Club’s 17-and-under team looks to punch state tournament ticket at this week’s Area 1 tournament
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
It’s been a very good summer for Napa Valley Baseball Club’s 17-and-under team, but with American Legion state tournament looming in they need to punch their ticket to be a part of the tournament, which is played at Cleve Borman Field in Yountville.
NVBC (33-9 overall, 12-3 southern division of Area 1) has a 19-man roster all of whom come from Napa, Vintage, Justin-Siena, and St. Helena high schools.
The team has multiple strengths, but one of the strengths is the large number of pitchers they have.
“It absolutely is probably our biggest strength, and you know us coaches talk and we don’t have necessary have what we call a number one (starter),” Napa Valley Baseball Club 17U manager Jason Schnaible said about the pitching. “A lot of teams say ‘hey this is our number one, two, and three’ what I think is we have a handful of number twos and we go deep. We have ten guys on this team that pitch, and I think when we get into tournaments where you’re playing five (or) six games in a row in a four or five day period that’s where we have the upperhand.”
Another pro for Schnaible of having a 19 players on the roster is the flexibility and interchangeability of the lineup on a day-to-day basis.
“We are very flexible,” Schnaible added. “We’ve got a lot of kids that play multiple positions; we have kids that play both infield (and) outfield; we have three (or) four different guys that can catch; like I said we have ten different pitchers, but I can tell you as we kinda sat down this is kind of a invite only league, so we had a chance to watch a lot of these kids play high school baseball throughout the year. We made sure any of the high schools whether it be Vintage, Napa, Justin, or St. Helena any kids that were brought up to their varsity team by their varsity coaches, we made sure that they were on on this team because that’s really what you’re seeing from another coaches perspective these kids have earned the right to play varsity baseball, so we felt that they absolutely had the right to be on what is the 17U team. It’s been great to have these kids that play multiple positions. I think another thing we planned this summer is there’s a lot of summer vacations going on and we knew that if we carried 18, 19 guys, which we have on the roster now that there would always be four, five guys missing for vacation purposes and other commitments that they have in the summer, but we’ve always had 12, 13 guys in that dugout and like I said if we have nine in the dugout we’re good to go, but we’ve had the luxury of having at least 12, 13 guys in that dugout at all times, so it’s been great. Great group of kids.”
So far this season tournaments have been a place of success for NVBC. They have two runner-up finishes and a tournament win. One of the runner-up finishes was the Fourth of July Joe Dimaggio invitational tournament, which was a 19-and-under tournament.
“I think it was big for us because I wouldn’t say I warned the kids, but I let them know (of) the talent level we were going to see,” Schnaible said of playing in the Fourth of July Invitational tournament. “You know outside of the Northern California area when you start dealing with the San Francisco and the Bay Area the Sacramento area that’s where a lot of kids play Joe Dimaggio versus legion, so that’s where you see a lot of talent, so those San Francisco teams were some of the best talent that you see in the state, and Pacifica (tournament winner) is some of the best kids that you’ll see in the state of California. So our goal is always to play up, play against older more experienced people and you remember we’re a 17U team right now, but we are really a group of 15- and 16-year-olds, so we have been playing up all year, but we compete, these guys compete, so it’s been great. And like I said the group of kids that we have they’re all played together they all know each other, a lot of them have played against each other at the different high schools, so I just think it’s been 100% positive, it’s been a great group of kids, and to watch them grow and learn the game. And one of my biggest things is to teach the team baseball, I don’t do a lot of individual work with these kids as I do the teamwork and I think that’s where we are and will find ourselves into these tournaments better than some of the other teams because we work as a team a lot better than them. Some other teams rely on individuals, we’ve got our number four hitter, we’ve got our number one pitcher, like I said we don’t have the number one pitcher, I don’t have the best hitter on the team. We have a group of guys and a team that works together as a team and that’s been probably one of the most successful things for us this summer is watching them work as a team.”
They also finished second in the Chico Suns tournament in Chico June 17th-20th. They also won Summer Sizzler tournament at Mather Sports Complex last weekend.
On Wednesday at 1 p.m. NVBC will face the Nortern Humboldt Giants who won their district tournament last week. Last year in the Area 1 tournament outscored their opponents 39-3 in route to the tournament title. Napa Valley Baseball Club has to win the Area 1 tournament or hope for host status to qualify for the California State American Legion tournament which takes place August 2nd-5th.
Besides Schnaible the other coaches are Jimmy Campbell, Ryan Cole, Brett Rody, and JD Whipple.
The team consists of Alex Dehzad, Charlie Sietz, Davide Migotto, Dylan Foster, Dylan Rody, Dylan Payne, Jacks Madigan, Jake Whipple, Jayge Cambell, Logan Nothman, Nick Schuttish, Noah Young, Owen Schnaible, Reid Mcaffrey, Sam Coltrin, Stacy Nelson, Stephen Cole, Theo Llewelyn, and Zach Joson.
