Warriors’ road changes, but game plan won’t

When the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics moved its baseball World Series to Lewiston in 1984, no one could have envisioned host Lewis-Clark State College winning seven national championships in the next eight years.

Yet, that’s what the Warriors did, capping off their fifth straight title Friday night by blanking Oral Roberts 7-0 before a record Harris Field crowd of 5,400.

With every passing year and an LCSC championship (except in 1986), visiting NAIA coaches and their teams began forming a feeling of trepidation and uneasiness every time they took the field against the Warriors.

So, despite the tremendous success at the gate and despite the many volunteers who pitched in, the NAIA decided to move its big baseball show to Des Moines, Iowa, for the next three years.

And no longer will a team, because of its host status, be given an automatic berth as LCSC enjoyed for the past eight national tournaments.

Also eliminated will be the at-large team, meaning that the size of the field will dip from 10 teams to just the eight area champions in 1992.

Since the Warriors finished third in 1978 and 1980 and runner-up in 1982 and 1983 and have never won the national title on the road, do they still have something to prove?

‘’No, I don’t look at it all that way because each team in each year is a unique unit,’’ LCSC coach Ed Cheff answered. ‘’What happens one year doesn’t mean anything the next year. There will be no pressure on next year’s team no matter where the Series is played.’’

However, Cheff does admit that having played before the home folks while not having had to qualify at the district and area level during the past eight years certainly didn’t hinder LCSC’s chances of being the very best of the best.

‘’There’s no doubt that we would have won a lot of those (national titles) on the road,’’ said Cheff, citing three years in particular. ‘’Just look at the run differential in the Series in 1984 (plus 41), in 1987 (plus 72) and this year (45). We would have competed well no matter where those Series were played.’’

LCSC’s Greg Umfleet, who won the Most Valuable Player honors in the ‘91 Series, believes the Warriors are capable of continuing their string of national titles away from home.

‘’Next year, I’m sure (LCSC’s No. 1 goal) will be to prove that the fact that it isn’t in Lewiston doesn’t have a great deal to do with it,’’ Umfleet said. ‘’That’s the big question right now. I’m sure they’ll do a good job of proving that’s not the case next year.’’

To make it six Series triumphs in a row in 1992, Cheff and the Warriors will have to take a much different route to reach Des Moines.

‘’Obviously, there will be a difference of (regular-season) schedule,’’ Cheff said. ‘’We will play 15 district games that’s a minimum and that means playing each of the six district teams three times.’’

In addition to LCSC, the other five District 1 teams are Whitworth, Whitman, Central Washington, Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound.

At the end of the 1992 regular season, the team with the best district record among the six will serve as host for the four-team double-elimination district tournament.

That winner advances to the Area 1 playoffs, which alternate yearly between California, Oregon and Idaho-Washington, the latter apparently in line for host status next year.

‘’We still hope to keep our NCAA (Division I) schedule as tough as it’s been in the past,’’ Cheff said. ‘’We hope Washington State and Gonzaga will continue to play us at least four games each. Bobo (Brayton) wants to cut back to four games against us because Washington State can play only 56 total games.’’ Another reason is that WSU will play 30 games in the Pac-10 North Division next year.

Over the weekend, Cheff was on the recruiting trail, watching a junior college all-star game at Longview, Wash., which happens to be his old stomping grounds before he took the LCSC job in 1977.

Cheff said his recruiting techniques won’t differ in light of not playing as automatic host for the Series.

‘’I don’t think that ever was a big recruiting factor,’’ Cheff said, referring to the national tournament. ‘’The big factor in recruiting is that if your players like it, they will recommend it to others. That’s the reason we’ve recruited so well.’’

In fact, Cheff said that in past years ‘’kids didn’t inquire as to whether we had the tournament in Lewiston or not,’’ adding that ‘’We are still getting the top kids that we normally get. The kids are more interested in the program.’’

Chad Miltenberger, one of the LCSC assistant coaches in charge of hitting and catching, said next year will be no different from previous seasons with regard to replacing graduating seniors and the every-day grind.

‘’We still need a catcher,’’ Miltenberger said. ‘’We had a good situation this past season with three catchers, but we’ve lost two. We’ve always geared our schedule to a two-catcher situation. The main thing is you recruit the same type of kids no matter where the nationals are played.’’

Chip Damato, the Warriors’ assistant coach in charge of infielders, said that LCSC enjoyed an abundance of on-field as well as bench talent in 1991.

‘’We felt that no matter which guys we played, we didn’t drop off all that much,’’ Damato said. ‘’But this year was exceptional with so many good guys. When we made the World Series cut, we could have flipped a coin.’’

While Cheff doesn’t plan on changing the program, he said there will be those times during the regular season when he might be more reluctant to go with his reserves than he did in the past.

‘’There may be less games on the schedule where we can play a group of non-starters,’’ Cheff said. ‘’In the past, we’ve always felt we could take a long look at some kids.’’

In terms of general preparation for the season, Cheff said nothing will change ‘’The things you do in the fall and winter are still the most important.’’

Although LCSC now is looking at future post-season road trips to California and Iowa, Cheff said his main concerns will again be the regular-season budget.

‘’Traveling to nationals is more of an institutional and departmental thing,’’ Cheff said. ‘’National travel monies will come out of the department.’’

As far as the regular-season schedule is concerned, nothing much has changed.

In fact, Cheff said he just received word that the Warriors will return next spring for a third straight year to Honolulu to take part in the Hawaii Rainbow Classic.

Although Cheff said a lot of NAIA coaches are disappointed in the NAIA World Series moving to Des Moines, he says the eight-team format has received favorable comment.

But can Des Moines support the Series the way Lewiston did?

‘’My thought is that it is hard to pinpoint,’’ Cheff answered. ‘’Lubbock, Nashville and St. Joseph’s were larger cities, and they had problems. I don’t see the title game drawing 5,000 or more people like it has in Lewiston.’’

If things don’t work out in the grassy flatlands of Iowa, Cheff said ‘’the NAIA may have to look back at Lewiston’’ for the 1995 Series and beyond.

At present, Cheff’s travel plans call for him to fly back to Tennessee Thursday where he will serve as a consulting coach for the United State National Baseball Team, which will compete in the Pam American Games this summer.

Cheff looked back fondly on the ‘91 title team, which never lost a home game.

‘’This may have been one of our all-time best teams in a lot of different ways,’’ Cheff said. ‘’This group of guys did neat things in the community, in the classroom and on the field.’’

This story was published in the June 4, 1991, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.