‘It’s our turn.’ New group takes Owyhee baseball to same ending — a state title
The previous Owyhee baseball teams cast a long shadow over the program. But this year’s squad finished the year with a first in program history.
The Storm topped Eagle 9-4 in the 6A state championship Saturday at Garden City’s Memorial Stadium. The championship celebration marked Owyhee’s fourth since the school opened five years ago. But it also marked the first time the Storm have swept the conference, district and state titles in the same year.
“They got tired of hearing about the core group that came through,” Owyhee coach Matt Rasmussen said of his team. “They were like, ‘Man, it’s our turn. Enough. We know they won three straight championships, and we’re tired of talking about it.’
“They wanted a chance to prove that they can play the game well, too.”
Owyhee (27-5) graduated 13 seniors after taking second place a year ago. That turnover pushed the Storm down to third place in the 6A SIC preseason coaches’ poll — a place most programs would kill for. But that pick and the receipts from a few dismissive comments fueled Owyhee all season.
The top-ranked Storm closed the season winning 23 of 24 games for their fourth title in five years, tying Boise’s run from 1994 to ‘98 in Idaho’s top classification. Owyhee also stands as the first 6A team to sweep conference, district and state titles in the same year since Timberline in 2021.
“We had a lot of drive this year,” Owyhee senior Nathan Keith said. “We had a lot of people saying that since we lost so many guys that it’s going to be hard. We just showed that we dominated all season.”
After falling into an early hole the past two days at Memorial Stadium, Owyhee flipped the script Saturday and jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. Keith crushed an RBI double into the left-center field gap, and senior first baseman Shelby Pease followed three batters later with a two-run single through the right side.
The Storm kept up the pressure from there, relying on their brand of high-pressure baseball to wear Eagle down with a litany of bunts, aggressive baserunning and situational hitting to manufacture runs out of thin air.
“We just know how to do those small things right, fundamentals and all that kind of stuff,” Pease said. “I think our bunt game and scoring runners when we need to is one of the best out of all the teams in the SIC.”
Owyhee finished the afternoon with nine runs on just six hits. It scored twice in the fourth inning without a single hit, then added another run in the sixth without a base hit.
Rasmussen pointed out that style has fallen out of favor in modern baseball. But another championship trophy proved the value of the Storm’s old-school approach.
“Our style is to get people moving. And with good contact guys, we try not to strike out much,” Rasmussen said. “I know with some of the new-school stuff, they don’t care about strikeouts and all that stuff. But we like to put the ball in play and get our feet moving.
“Sometimes it backfires. But for the most part, that style of play has helped us manufacture some runs. We don’t always have to get hits to score. We can do it in other ways.”
Eagle (22-9) threatened to grab momentum in a pair of moments. Shortstop Kristian Fusco put the Mustangs on the board with a two-run home run with nobody out in the fourth inning, but Eagle could not add on.
Easton Gothberg added a two-run double into the right-center field gap in the fifth, and the Mustangs loaded the bases with one out. But Keith came on in relief and worked his way out of the jam to stymie the momentum shift.
Eagle finished the year 0-4 against its neighbor, including a loss in the district championship last week. But the second-place finish marks the Mustangs’ best since 2011, when they also finished second.
This story was originally published May 16, 2026 at 6:44 PM.
