1/3
Ogden High baseball coach Doyle Holt talks to the team after a game at Morgan High School on March 22, 2022.
Doyle Holt
2/3
Ogden High’s baseball team poses after winning the Battle for Harrison Boulevard trophy, which goes to the Ben Lomond-Ogden winner each year, at Lindquist Field on April 5, 2022.
Doyle Holt
3/3
Ogden’s Will Minkevitch throws to first base during a high school baseball game against Ben Lomond on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.
Patrick Carr, Standard Examiner
❮ ❯
Ogden High baseball coach Doyle Holt talks to the team after a game at Morgan High School on March 22, 2022.
Ogden High’s baseball team poses after winning the Battle for Harrison Boulevard trophy, which goes to the Ben Lomond-Ogden winner each year, at Lindquist Field on April 5, 2022.
Ogden’s Will Minkevitch throws to first base during a high school baseball game against Ben Lomond on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.
On-field success for Ogden High’s baseball program has been fleeting for at least the past two decades apart from a two-year period in the mid-2010s that featured playoff appearances.
This year’s Tigers team turned the tide.
After an 0-18 campaign in 2021 with a young team, a still-young Ogden finished the 2022 season with a 14-14 overall record and a 10-5 mark in Region 13, good for a second-place finish that is among the program’s highest region finishes since the 1990s.
The Tigers closed the regular season by winning nine out of 10 games, including beating Grantsville 5-0 in the Region 13 tournament championship game, and are the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Baseball Team of the Year.
The 14 regular-season wins this year nearly equaled the 15 total wins between the 2021, 2019 and 2018 seasons combined, along with the COVID-shortened 2020 season as the Tigers moved from the 4A classification to 3A.
“That was the most rewarding thing for me because I saw their faces last year when teams are putting 18 runs on us, I’m feeling bad about it. The fact we were able to redeem some of those losses was good, fulfilling and just a lot of fun,” Ogden coach Doyle Holt said.
Holt said a few kids approached him in the offseason and said they weren’t going to play baseball at OHS anymore after an 0-18 season in 2021 where half the losses came by double digits.
Ogden started this season out 2-7, with its closest loss being by three runs, going into Region 13 play. Then, the Tigers beat Morgan 3-0 in a nine-inning pitchers’ duel and ended up winning their series against the Trojans 2-1.
“That first region game I thought, ‘Man we can be pretty good,’ because Morgan was picked I think second and that was big for us to go and compete,” Holt said.
After getting swept by Grantsville, the eventual unbeaten region champion, Ogden swept Ben Lomond, Layton Christian and took two out of three games from South Summit to secure for the Tigers a second-place region finish.
Success at the Region 13 tournament, where Ogden beat South Summit and Grantsville, was a highlight of the Tigers’ season along with a walk-off win over Bonneville in March.
The season ended with two losses in two playoff games against Delta and Manti.
“We were set up to be pretty good in the tournament and we just picked a bad day to have a bad day,” Holt said.
Junior catcher Sean Garceau, who Holt called a “character,” led the team in batting with a .494 average to go with 19 RBIs, 11 doubles, four triples and two home runs. Garceau also pitched 20 innings this season, allowed seven earned runs (2.45 ERA) and struck out 37 batters compared to six walks.
Sophomore right-hander Ellio Saenz led the team in innings pitched with 38 2/3 and also posted a ludicrous strikeout-to-walk ratio of 70-to-5 along with a 1.81 ERA.
Pitching, specifically not issuing as many walks as in 2021, which was an emphasis from start to finish for the team along with moving on from errors and not letting them compound into more errors.
Holt commended the entire coaching staff for how hard they worked this year and made a special mention of pitching coach Jarrod Hoagland, who Holt said made a big difference for the team’s pitchers this year.
Ogden pitchers had a 60 pitch limit early in the season no matter what the situation was. The pitch limit, along with being a common-sense move to save arms, was part of the team’s plan for being able to compete in Region 13.
It hurts the Tigers early on, but paid off later.
Speaking of later, there could be more in store for Ogden in 2023 if the team stays somewhat intact. For starters, the Tigers had seven players bat .300 or better and only one of those seven, Alex Howard, was a senior.
Saenz batted .395 with 23 RBIs, five doubles and four homers. Sophomore Kale Adams hit .350, sophomore Will Minkevitch hit .329 with 15 RBIs and sophomore Ryder Rivera hit .328.
Another prospective returner would be sophomore shortstop Diego DeLeon, who started in 2021 as a freshman but suffered a broken jaw early in the 2022 season.
Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at [email protected], Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.
Newsletter
Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter.
Comments are closed.