Barbee's World: Red Devils embrace the hot seat at NWAC Championships
Home on the Range – Lower Columbia College puts on a show in defense of Story Field
By Same Barbee special to BlastZoneMedia.com / blastzonenews@gmail.com
NWAC Baseball / Commentary
STORY FIELD — It must be really hard to practice with all those years of winning staring at you.
That green set of stands for the fans down the left field line, built not for a Red Devils game but for a tournament of 12-year-old All-Stars, didn’t always have those years of wear upon it. In fact, the long row of pennants that adorn its upper most facade used to all be on the outside of the stadium, but the new nursing building got in the way of the view. So the powers that be moved them to a more conspicuous location for the players.
They always loom. And they’re big. The white of the numbers catches your eye.
And you move down. Year after year. Decade after decade. Thinking about how different the world was in 1969. Then from 1970 through 2025, Lower Columbia College claimed 15 Conference titles. Some were before the two states merged their community college athletic associations, but most are after the merger to create the NWAC(C). And since the ‘90s it hasn’t been close.
Winning championships is part of the recruiting pitch to bring college baseball players to Longview. But you don’t really have to say it out loud. Your goal can also be your villain. Yeah, you’re gonna be expecting to win. But you’re also expected to win.
Forget about the polls (Yes, the rankings that had the Red Devils ranked No. 1 coming into the season, and then again before the tournament.). Everyone knows LCC is good. I’m sure them topping the preseason poll generated all kinds of opinions. I bet is was a really fun group chat in several different communities, including Cowlitz County..
So when it doesn’t happen, when the Devils have to give the trophy away, what’s the response? LCC skipper Kurt Lupinski and I (full disclosure, we coach together in the summer) talked a lot about what failure and success looked like last year. A new school record for wins and other assorted accolades. And yet, they only won one game in the NWAC Tournament. Didn’t get past Saturday in the bracket. That left a whole weekend to watch other people play on their field.
With those years staring at you.
This season, this championship run, started on that Saturday one year ago. And it became a mantra. In their minds they became bison.
Stay with me.
The thinking goes that when a bison is in the path of a storm, it makes one calculation; how do I find the shortest path out of this storm? And so it figures, if you march toward it, it’ll move by quicker. Now you’re covering some distance, and the worst of the weather is also moving toward the group, so the skies will clear quicker and everyone will come out the other end together.
A cow, on the other hand, runs from the storm. It’s scared, so it tries to get away. But it can’t. In the end the herd is scattered and still out in the cold.
The end of last season was a storm. So how did third baseman Sam Davidson and the rest of the Red Devils meet it? What were they? All together now…
“We became bison,” Sam Davidson said. “We ran straight into the storm.”
And when the weather cleared in Monday those pennants were still staring back at them — welcoming a new member to the club.
Sixteen. Lower Columbia has now won 16 NWAC titles in program history. That’s the most in the conference. It’s the most for any team, and it’s not even close.
Lupinski is now responsible for hanging two of those championships on the wall. He fully understands how internal and external pressure play off each other. That one brings the other, and the other compounds on the one. It doesn’t really do anyone any good to ignore that fact. It is so.
The trick is how to channel it. How to have a healthy relationship with it. And that comes through hard work. Live up to it. Aspire to it. Fake it ‘til you make it. But you must believe you will make it. After all, every storm has a happy ending — if you can find it.
“These are just good reminders to me of really how hard it is,” Lupinski said. “Yes, we have 16. But look at how many teams have never even made the NWAC tournament or how many placed in the Top-4.”
Extraordinary results require extraordinary expectations.
Allow me to be more specific, and we’ll move on.
Lower Columbia played fantastic defensively in the tournament. But that wasn’t always so this season. They couldn’t execute a relay throw under any circumstances in the fall. Teams exploited it, which probably means aggressive sends from the third base coach and extra bases surrendered by inaccurate or ill-advised throws.
Did they try to run from the storm? Or did they decided to be bison?
“Instead of dragging their blanket at practice and not working hard, they said,
‘Okay, let’s work on. Let’s drill it out.,’” Lupinski recalled. “And just those little details is what has won us so many games.”
And most memorably, the last one.
— VIDEO: LCC players dogpile on the turf at Story Field after defeating Lane 12-2 to win the NWAC Championship, Monday, May 25, at Story Field. / Video by Sam Barbee for BZM —
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