Wildcats deserve credit for turning season around

Not many people gave the Kentville Wildcats much of a chance in their NSSBL semifinal with Dartmouth.

The Moosehead Dry won the last five league championships and had a 22-7 regular season record to Kentville’s 11-18.

As it turned out, Dartmouth’s regular season performance didn’t mean much to the Wildcats, who captured the first two games of the series, and after losing three in a row, climbed back up off the carpet and won both game six and seven to complete the upset.

The Wildcats and Moosehead Dry have met nine times in the NSSBL playoffs since 1996, seven times (including five years in a row from 1996 to 2000) in the league final. Back in the late ‘90s, Kentville and Dartmouth met in four consecutive NSSBL finals (1997 through 2000), some of the best matchups in the more than 30-year history of the senior league.

Dartmouth has won most of the time – the Moosehead Dry have won all but four league titles since 1990, but Kentville remains the only team in that time to have won back-to-back championships (in 1999 and 2000).

The rivalry took a beating the past couple of years, when Dartmouth defeated the Wildcats in finals that went four and five games, but most of the meetings have been intense and competitive.

Which was the case this time. Kentville won the series by beating Jason Bailey twice and Trevor Zwann once, by coming back from three runs down to win game two 7-6, and by doing a better job than the Dry turning hits into runs.

Kentville served notice this year might be different by knocking Bailey around for a 6-1 win in game one. Bailey wasn’t as dominant as he has been in the past, but he’s still a darned good pitcher.

In game two, the Wildcats scored twice in the eighth and twice in the ninth off Steve Nelson and Zwann to take a 2-0 series lead.

Game three went to the Dry 4-2. Three days of rain allowed Kentville to come back with Curtis Falls, the game one winner, but Dartmouth was able to counter with Bailey and even the score.

Game four also went to Dartmouth, a 3-2 thriller in which Nelson (barely) outpitched Wildcats veteran Kevin Nichols.

A 15-3 Dartmouth win in game five had the Wildcats staring elimination in the face. In most other years, Kentville would have simply folded up.

Jeff Bishop – the wily “Bulldog” who has pitched so well for so long, both for Kentville and for Hantsport – got the call in game six and didn’t disappoint, going the distance in a 3-1 win over Zwann who pitched well but allowed three runs to Bishop’s one.

That set the stage for game seven, a contest in which the Wildcats were not to be denied, scoring early and often in a 13-9 win. There were heroes all ‘round (including Ryan Brothers, who went four-for-four; and Falls, who won his second game of the series), but, to me, the key to the game – and, in fact, the entire series – was Luke Smith.

We haven’t heard much from Luke these past few years, as age and injuries forced him from behind the plate to first base, right field or even DH - when he played at all. Certainly no one was going to push Kevin Benjamin, the team’s leading hitter this season at .402, out of his starting catcher’s spot but, at the start of game one, there was Luke, behind the plate. There’s no question head coach Jeff Lockhart took a gamble, but Luke bailed his skipper out big-time, turning back the clock both in the field and at bat and playing a huge role in leading the Wildcats to victory. The turning point of the series for me came in the first inning of game four, when speedster Chris Head reached first base, took off for second – and was thrown out by Luke. Later, Luke erased another potential Dartmouth basestealer.

I hope the Wildcats beat whoever they end up playing in the NSSBL final (as I write this, their opponent had not been determined). This team deserves another shot at a national title, and I am not betting against them getting there.