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<< Previous   of   Next >> Photo courtesy of Logan Fowler, LCSC assistant SID  (click to enlarge) Zach Adam, a Snohomish native, prepares to hit. “Every day is intense,” he says about playing at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Report scores and results to 425-339-3470 or 1-866-6-SCORES (Call after 4:30 p.m.) E-mail information including items for Tuesday's Communities Sports Roundup and Thursday's Outdoor Calendar, to sports@heraldnet.com Kevin Brown, Sports Editor kbrown@heraldnet.com   Published: Saturday, March 15, 2008 When you play baseball for Lewis-Clark State College, 'winning is like breathing' LCSC is a samll school with a large reputation You don't walk, you run. That is, if you want to play baseball for Lewis-Clark State College, you do. You hustle. You play hard. You play the game right. Take it from Zach Adam, Nic Benton and Ryan Woods. "I've never experienced anything like it,'' Adam said. "Every day is intense. Every day is the most important day.'' But would Adam, a senior from Snohomish, rather be playing for some other team? Not on your life. "Winning,'' he said, "is like breathing to us.'' L-C State, with 15 national championships in its trophy case, is the New York Yankees of college baseball. "I'd say that,'' agreed Benton, a senior outfielder from Marysville. "It's definitely not Jackson High School,'' said Woods, a junior transfer from Everett Community College who played his high school ball at the Mill Creek school. What sets L-C State apart is the coach, Ed Cheff, now in his 32nd season at the Lewiston, Idaho, college. It's a small school with a large reputation. Affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the Warriors have won every one of those championships under Cheff. As hosts of the Avista NAIA World Series in May, the Warriors -- with an automatic berth in the tournament -- will be seeking their third consecutive title and their sixth in this decade. To give you an idea how good the last two teams were, they went a combined 105-13, with last year's club going 58-5. That improved L-C State's record under Cheff to 1,559-403 with two ties, a .794 winning percentage. Now you see why kids want to play for him. That and the fact that he has sent more than 100 players into professional baseball, with several making it to the Major Leagues. Eight of his players were drafted a year ago, including 13th overall pick Beau Mills. It takes a special kind of kid to play for Cheff. "It's not only physically challenging, but mentally you've got to be strong,'' said Levi Lacey, the baseball coach at Everett Community College. "He's a really demanding coach.'' How demanding? Well, L-C State lost a game early this season on a dropped routine fly ball in the 10th inning. Afterward, the entire team ran sprints for 30 minutes. Another thing that sets Cheff off is when a player takes a called third strike on a good pitch. That'll earn him a seat on the bench for the rest of the game. Lacey has three of his former players on the current Warrior team -- Adam, a first baseman-designated hitter who played his high school ball at Monroe; Woods, a right-handed pitcher, and Mickey Pingree, a senior outfielder from Boise. "They're all very tough young men who fit in that program,'' Lacey said. There is a fourth Snohomish County player on the team. Brett Stenger, a pitcher from Stanwood, transferred to L-C State this season after two years at Columbia Basin CC. Since he isn't on the active 40-man roster, it appears he'll redshirt. When the Warriors came to Seattle last month to play the University of Washington, they were all business from the moment they stepped off the bus. Once they got settled in the third-base dugout, when orders were given, they were quickly carried out. A few minutes after they arrived, a player came hustling up the third-base line. "Coach wants to see all position players,'' he said to a teammate. "Position players, let's go,'' the teammate shouted. And away they went -- hurriedly. Later, when the Huskies took infield, every L-C State player's eyes were focused on the field. "It's a completely different atmosphere,'' Woods said of playing for Cheff. Adam acknowledged that the mental part of the game is heavily stressed "because if you're mentally weak, the skills don't matter." "You've got to be thick-skinned," he added. " You can't be soft and play for him.'' Soft is bailing out of the batter's box on a high and tight pitch. In the first 20 games, L-C State players had been hit by pitches 31 times. Cheff believes it's the mentally tough team that prevails in the end. "Sooner or later you're going to face somebody that's going to have the same talent as you,'' he said. "I don't fear their talent. I just fear their mentality. I want to make sure our mentality is what we want it to be.'' How does a team toughen up mentally? How about climbing into a boxing ring and duking it out. Just before Christmas, the team took part in what are called "smokers,'' three one-minute rounds pitting players of similar sizes. It's been a Cheff tradition for years. Adam and Benton didn't participate because they were coming off injuries that kept them sidelined last year, but newcomer Woods did. And he loved it. "I'd never boxed in my life,'' he said. "But it was a good experience. You don't realize how tiring it is until you do it.'' Benton compared it to the one-on-one duel between the pitcher and the batter, minus the body blows. "You learn not to back down to anyone,'' he said. Cheff thinks it prepares his players for any anxieties that might arise in a big game. "There's never been a kid at Lewis-Clark State say he was more nervous in a championship game than he was in a boxing smoker,'' the coach said. "I guarantee you.'' Kids are aware of the smokers when they're recruited, and they just keep coming. The boxing is one difference between L-C State and the rest of college baseball. Another is, Cheff's teams practice the way they play. In other words, they do a lot of scrimmaging during practice. "We believe you've got to play to get better,'' he said. "Baseball is not a game to come out and spend three hours on mundane drills. "The heart and soul of the game is the pitcher and the hitter. It's one-on-one like a boxing match. The more you can duplicate that, the better your players are going to be.'' The current players are plenty good. Through the first 20 games, the Warriors were 18-2, including an 8-6 victory over NCAA Division I Washington that day in Seattle. Cheff's lads take on any and all comers, but some big schools won't play them because they figure they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose. "I'd love to play (two-time defending Division I champion) Oregon State,'' Benton said. It may be a small school, but how would you feel if you were a recruit and you got a call from Major League pitcher Keith Foulke encouraging you to enroll at L-C State? Foulke played for the Warriors in the mid-1990s and Cheff has called on him to make such a call. "We don't ask him a lot, but we'll ask him once in a while and absolutely he'll do it,'' Cheff said. "The loyalty a lot of our guys have to our program really helps us in recruiting.'' What kind of kids does he want in his program? "The big thing is you've got to be a good teammate and if you can't share success, you're not a good teammate,'' he said. "And if you can't care about people, you can't be a good teammate.'' And if you're not a good teammate, you won't be playing for Ed Cheff.

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