MSHS sports March 28

Manitou baseball feeling the growing pains of inexperience

The growing pains hurt more in some years than others.

The Manitou Springs baseball team is learning that painful lesson this season as it’s been having trouble staying competitive during this early season stretch of games.

That’s not to say the Mustangs aren’t competing at all, but in their last three games, it’s been an inning or two that have produced lopsided results that aren’t really representative of Manitou’s efforts.

Prior to packing up and heading for the warm temperatures of Arizona, the Mustangs lost to The Classical Academy 10-1 in a game that wasn’t a true blowout until the seventh inning.

After falling behind 3-1, the Mustangs (1-6 overall) got one back in the bottom of the second as Hayden Martinez drove in Cooper Frojen. But that was the only offense Manitou could generate.

“We’re definitely experiencing the growing pains of having quite a few sophomores play, as well as some seniors who don’t have a lot of experience at the varsity level,” coach Brandon DeMatto said. “Our lack of experience has gotten the best of us in the early part of the season for sure.”

The woes followed them to Arizona where, in games against Oregon-based teams, the Mustangs lost to La Grande 14-0 and St. Helens 15-1. 

This doesn’t suggest that the season is trending this way permanently. DeMatto can look at past years with young teams and know that early struggles, if handled correctly, can translate into a competitive mindset in league play and, more importantly, the postseason. 

Just push the spring season back one week. Just one little week.

In 2019, the Mustangs were 3-7 heading into league play, having lost all three games on their Arizona trip, but ultimately beat No. 3 Sterling in regionals. Early losses can generate growth in a team, but the mindset has to be aimed at learning from the struggles and applying those lessons moving forward.

“The biggest key for us is the concept of not getting overwhelmed by how much we have to learn, but being able to digest it in small bites,” DeMatto said. “When you’re struggling the way we are right now, it can feel like an overwhelming task, but we’re going to have to go about this looking for small victories here and there. When it all comes together, this group can be a pretty good group.”

With Arizona and Spring Break firmly in the rearview mirror, the Mustangs will start looking for those small victories when they see Peyton at home on Wednesday. 

The Panthers are traditionally a team that puts itself in contention in the Class 2A playoffs and this season looks to be no different as they started on a three-game winning streak.

Manitou will open Tri-Peaks play on April 12 when it heads to Salida for a doubleheader. Manitou swept last year’s series against the Spartans and outscored them 27-3 in the process. If they can come home with another sweep, it may just be the indicator that taking lumps early in the season will only generate success later in the season.

A lesson from 2021 would serve spring sports well

Ah yes, the annual spring sports sprint. There’s nothing like condensing state championships for nine sports into a 23-day span, Wait, that’s not fair. No actual champions are crowned on Day 1 of that stretch, so let’s call it 22 days.

It wasn’t more than a week after state basketball championships ended that I began assembling my calendar for spring state championships. Outside of the Bulletin, I run a state-wide preps outlet where we will have coverage of all state championships in all classifications.

And every year, I can’t believe we haven’t been able to remember maybe the best positive that Covid gave high school sports.

Why the rush?

Everyone seems to be so worried about getting all state championships completed before May is over that they’re bound to forget the speed bumps that they’ll inevitably hit along the way.

In 2021, the Covid-affected year that split high school sports into four seasons, all of June was utilized to give every sport as much time as possible. And from the guy who gets paid to observe high school sports as a whole, it worked great.

We need to remember that.

I’m certainly not recommending stretching championships all the way to the end of June, but why can’t we shift spring sports back even just one week?

This isn’t a Manitou Springs problem, but it does affect Manitou Springs athletes.

My mind started going down this road when talking with a Manitou coach about their team prior to the start of spring practice. There was frustration in the overlap between winter and springs. And there probably should be frustration. I don’t disagree that winter championships extend way too long. Do we really need 40 teams in the Class 6A and 5A basketball postseason brackets? No. We do not. Cap everyone at 24 and finish a week sooner, but that’s another problem for another day.

The quick fix that can make it manageable for everyone is to just push the spring season back one week. Just one little week. 

Here’s some context as to what that would do.

If Manitou’s boys basketball team had made it to Denver Coliseum for the Great 8 or Final 4, the baseball team would have been without four key players for its first three games.

If the girls had made it to the Coliseum, the soccer team wouldn’t have had three of four top goal scorers for this year.

There is just as much damage on the back end when state championships are at stake. If Madison Sharon qualifies for state golf for a second year in a row, she’ll walk across the stage at graduation then have to bolt for the Pueblo Country Club to play in a practice round the day before the tournament starts.

Seniors on the track and field team like Ethan Traenkle and Jon Polizzi might miss out on some of the activities that lead up to graduation because they’re blitzing through various lanes at the state meet at Jeffco Stadium.

Pushing back one week solves a lot of these problems. And I know that on the surface, it’s not that easy. There is a process and there are a lot of factors involved. Families are planning vacations, kids have summer jobs and so on.

But everyone was willing to figure it out when the prospect of even playing these spring sports in a pandemic was threatened. Having a 365-day heads up every year feels like it should be pretty manageable. And everyone would benefit from a seven-day shift.

And even though it wouldn’t make spring sports feel like the marathon of fall and winter, it darn sure wouldn’t feel like the 100-meter dash.

Mustangs girls soccer team finds offense in first win of the season

Heading into spring break, the Manitou Springs girls soccer team finally got the offensive outbreak it needed.

After scoring just one goal in their first three games, the Mustangs scored goals in bunches as they rolled to a 10-0 win over Banning Lewis on March 20. It was also significant as it was the first win of the year for Manitou, following a season-opening loss to TCA and ties with Buena Vista and Pueblo Centennial.

Ahead of a layoff from games over spring break, it was reassuring to see a scoring effort that was more on par with what the Mustangs were generating a year ago.

“It’s been frustrating, trying to score goals,” coach Ben Mack said. “The first half [against Banning Lewis] was still a little frustrating, but I had a feeling we were going to wear them down a little bit and we talked about some things at halftime and they came out and executed.”

They executed in a big way. Elie Bourgeois got the Mustangs (1-1-2 overall) on the board in the first half and added another goal before halftime.

Then the avalanche of goals came in the final 40 minutes of play. She added a third goal in the second half to get her first hat trick of the season.

Brenna Cote also scored three goals before the game was over, Nolan Barrett scored twice and Elisa Karr and Annika Kuzbek each added one.

Prior to the Banning Lewis game, the Mustangs have been struggling to get the ball up field and finish the shots they’ve been taking. They’ve been down a key component from last year’s offensive powerhouse as Kara Donegan has been sidelined with a foot injury and it’s just left the team with a bit of an unfamiliar feeling on the field without her there.

“She’s usually a big player in the middle for us,” Bourgeois said. “We’ve just been struggling with finishing [scoring opportunities] a lot.”

We identified spring break as that reset button. – Coach Ben Mack

But getting a 10-0 win going into break should serve as a confidence booster, especially since Donegan should be back the next time the Mustangs are on the field. After the loss to TCA and the two ties, building confidence was feeling very much like a burden for this team.

“Not starting the season as strong as we normally do probably brought us down a bit,” Bourgeois said. 

But it didn’t take them out. The Mustangs now have a chance to get rested and healthy before hitting the long stretch of their schedule, which begins with a road game against St. Mary’s on April 3. The Mustangs have won four straight games against the Pirates and have outscored them 37-0 in that streak.

But Mack insists the Pirates are better and that his team will have to be at its best when vacation time is over.

“We identified spring break as that reset button,” Mack said. “We were getting out in these first four games and feeling everything out, what formations work for us, what players can do and can’t do and what we need to emphasize in practice.”

And they’ll need to have those questions answered fast. The Mustangs play 11 regular season games over the course of 30 days. Luckily, the performance against Banning Lewis suggests that a winning season is very much in the cards.