JUSTIN LAWSON
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Posted: 3/13/2008
The baseball legacy at Reno High School has been a long time building, all the way back to 1962 when the Huskies won their first state championship. The reminders of past teams are all around, on the backstop at Zunini Field, in the hallways at the school and, for some, at home.
That legacy hit a speed bump last season when the Huskies missed the playoffs for the first time since Pete Savage took over as coach in 1995.
“Last year it was definitely a disappointment, kind of a shock because we knew that the outcome, not making playoffs, that’s not something we strive for at the beginning of each year,” Reno infielder Thomas Wood said.
Reno strives to be among the best in Nevada high school baseball every year, and that has led the program to 11 regional championships and five state championships. The reminder of last season’s disappointment is serving as a motivation this year.
“That’s almost all the motivation,” Reno pitcher Glenn Wallace said. “You don’t want to lose, that’s not fun. So you’ve got to remember that every game and come out and get better.”
Reno is looking to improve on last season’s 14-7 league record (22-12 overall) and could be in a good place to do so with two Sierra League first-team selections returning for their senior seasons in pitcher Drew Simpson and Wood, and a slew of players with varsity experience.
“We’ve got a lot of good team chemistry going, a lot of leaders so I think everything is coming together,” Wallace said. “We all have the same goal, and we’re all working hard to get there.”
That goal is to go where teams of the past have gone: the state tournament. The Huskies have made the state tournament eight times since Savage became head coach, and some of the players who went to previous state tournaments are relatives of current players. Wallace and Simpson both have older brothers that played on Reno’s 2004 state championship.
“When you’re in middle school or even elementary school you know about the brothers, you know about Glenn’s brother winning state,” Wood said. “You just get here and it’s just a big expectation to win and it’s just a fun thing to do.”
Wallace’s brother, John, plays at Oregon State, where he won the National Championship in 2006 and 2007.
Expectations of this size can be too much for some, but Reno’s players seem to embrace that role and do the small things every day in practice to cement their legacy.
“There’s a lot of expectations in our program, but the expectations come from the excellence that we demand out of them on a daily basis,” Savage said. “So our kids are motivated every day.”
In a practice earlier this week, little things were the focus as Savage led the players through bunting drills, fielding drills and other fundamentals of the game.
“We teach the kids to go pitch by pitch and to go inning by inning and game by game, so whatever we’ve done in the past and whatever we’re going to do in the future is really not important,” Savage said. “It’s what we’re doing today.”
Today the Huskies are taking small steps toward tomorrow, working on cementing their place in the Reno baseball legacy.