11-15, that was the record for the Westside Warriors last season after losing in the first round of districts to Lincoln Southwest. However after bringing in former Bellevue West head coach Jason Shockey, and a couple of new players, the Warriors baseball team has had a complete turnaround.
The Warriors are 19-2 this season, a remarkable accomplishment for any team but especially for a team who was under .500 just last season. The most recent accomplishment in this magical season was winning the metro championship for the first time since 2015 also the same year the Warriors won their last state championship. Along with the metro championship, Westside is on the longest winning streak in the state at 12 games with their last loss coming on March 30th against Elkhorn South, who they eventually beat in the metro semi-finals. Westside is also the only team that has bested the defending state champions, Lincoln East, thoroughly beating them 12-6 on their way to winning the Frank Ryan invitational and becoming the number one team in the state.
“The experience as being the number one team has been amazing,” Westside first baseman Duncan Hansen said “We are really playing for the team and not selfishly, everyone has been doing their part.”
In the 12 game win streak Westside has beaten seven top 10 teams, including the former number one seed, the former number two seed twice and the number three seeded team. In a win against rival Creighton Prep one of the spectators was former Warrior head coach Bob Greco, the winningest coach in Warriors history throughout his 26 years as a head coach including seven state championships. “I haven’t seen him in awhile so it was nice to have him out here,” Shockey said in an interview with the Omaha World Herlad. “I hope he likes what he sees.”
It has been a full team effort for the Warriors in their historic season, the Warriors have hit 11 home runs this season, a monster jump from last year where they finished the season with five. Westside as a team is hitting .351 getting a hit over a third of a time outscoring their opponents by 121 runs with both of their losses coming off of one run.
The metro tournament the culmination of what the Warriors have been all about, going 4-0 in three days, dismantling Bryan and Westview before going to play Elkhorn south, the Storm struck first getting two in the second inning before Westside finally cracked the scoreboard with a run in the fifth then going scoreless all the way to the final inning getting a run in the seventh to force extras, the Warriors then walked it off it off in the eighth to win 3-2. In the finals against Millard North it was more of a shootout, Westside got the initial lead with two runs in the first two innings before Millard North tied it in the fourth at 2-2. In the fifth Hansen crushed a homer to right field to retake lead, however in the bottom half of the frame Jackson Smith hit a leadoff homer to even it up at 3-3, the Mustangs then scored two more to go up 5-3. That score remained till the seventh when the Warriors bats came alive scoring five in the top of the seventh to get a 8-5 lead they would not relinquish winning the metro tournament.
The Warriors still have a long way to go before they can be crowned champions, they still have a couple tournaments to go with the Papillion Invite coming this weekend. The next regular season game is against the sixth ranked Millard South, and they still have the third ranked Millard North Mustangs and a top ten Westview team.
No matter what happens the rest of the season the Warriors are going to remember this season for a long time and is a big stepping stone in coach Shockey’s first season as the Warriors head coach.
“The expectations at the beginning of the year were high as a team we knew we were going to be really good but others didn’t,” Hansen said. “Now that everyone knows how good we are, we have a target on our back that everyone is going after.”
