Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Senior Preston Daniels reacts after the Warriors’ key win at McKinleyville in April.
By Ray Hamill — A memorable season came to a disappointing end for the Del Norte baseball team, but that shouldn’t take from what they accomplished this spring.
The Warriors dropped back-to-back games to close out their campaign, including a 12-1 loss to Kelseyville in the opening round of the North Coast Section Division-3 tournament in Crescent City on Tuesday.
That defeat followed an 8-1 loss to Eureka in the Charles Lakin tournament semifinals last week.
“It wasn’t how we wanted to end the season, but it is what it is,” Del Norte head coach Jeff Cook said. “Kelseyville did a good job. They capitalized on our mistakes.”
The season, however, should be considered a successful one.
A roster that included six seniors rose to the challenge over the past two months and ended a long wait for a Big 5 championship.
And they had to overcome a poor start to the campaign to do so.
A 5-4 loss at Hoopa in their fifth game saw the Warriors drop to 1-4 and the players found themselves at a crossroad early in the schedule.
That loss, however, seemed to act as a wake-up call and the Del Norte boys would not taste defeat again for another four weeks while going on an 11-game unbeaten run.
They finished 10-2 in the Big 5, edging McKinleyville by just one game for the title.
Their two defeats in conference came against Eureka and McKinleyville, but the Warriors crucially won both of those series, which ultimately proved decisive in the race for the conference crown.
A 3-1 win at McKinleyville in the middle of April was the difference in such a tight race.
Despite being out-hit that day 4-3, the Del Norte boys dug deep and found a way to pull out the win behind team ace and probable Big 5 MVP Preston Daniels.
That was the game that had the rest of the H-DNL sit up and take notice.
None of that, however, surprised Cook, who saw the potential in this group of players when he took over the team before the 2024 season.
“I feel like we could have done this last year,” he said, despite the Warriors wining just two of 12 conference games and finishing dead last in the standings in 2024. “This year we came in and we hit the ball, and that was the difference.”
A talented senior class of Daniels, Saxon Taylor, Aidan Rice, Greyson Franklin, Willie Nelson and Anthony Cardenas also played a big role in the team’s success.
“I had the right seniors in the right spots,” Cook said. “And hopefully we’ve got the underclassmen ready to go next year.”
It didn’t help matters that Taylor, who was the team’s leading hitter, missed the past two games due to sickness.
In his absence, the Warriors managed just four hits in Tuesday’s loss, one each by Daniels, Rice, Franklin and Landon Williams.
Their only run of the game came in the final inning.
Nelson reached base on an error and rounded this way to third on a pair of walks.
Landon Williams was then hit by a pitch to drive home Nelson.
Kelseyville senior pitcher Brock Barrick kept the Del Norte bats in check for much of the game and he was a difference maker in the win.
“He’s a four-year starter. He was good,” Cook said. “he competed and he had a good demeanor the whole game.”
Daniels took the loss on the mound to close out a memorable campaign for the senior.
He was pulled in the sixth inning because of his pitch count and the Warriors trailed by just three runs at that stage.
Daniels struck out nine in his final high school game.
The visitors, however, would score nine runs in the top of the seventh to end the game as a contest.
But it was still a successful season for the Warriors, who had not finished higher than fourth in the Big 5 since 2015 and had not won the league title since 2014.
“It was a good season,” Cook said. “We’ll take being league champions as a highlight of the season, and hopefully it’s the beginning of something.”
