The Calais High School baseball program was flourishing not long ago, winning consecutive Eastern Maine Class C championships in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
But Washington County’s longtime American Legion baseball team, the Calais Suns, disbanded a year later, and it wasn’t long before there were barely enough players for Calais to field a full high school team.
Today that looks to be a thing of the past.
Not only does Calais now have 15 high school players and similar middle-school numbers this spring, the Blue Devils varsity squad entered Thursday’s play as one of just four undefeated teams statewide — with Edward Little of Auburn, Hall-Dale of Farmingdale and Richmond — and ranked first in Class C North.
“When I started as head coach we barely had enough to make nine,” said third-year Calais head coach Marc Rohde, who began coaching with the Blue Devils as an assistant in 2011. “But we ended up talking to a few boys around the school trying to get them to come out and finally started to get more kids interested.”
The team made a modest rebound in 2017, earning the final Class C North playoff berth after a one-year hiatus from postseason play.
This spring Calais has higher aspirations, with its 5-0 start fueled by two victories over neighboring Woodland, the top-ranked team in Class D North.
“It’s getting better here,” said Rohde. “I told these boys three years ago when I started that if we could stay together and work together that by their senior year I thought we’d be pretty strong.”
Calais has averaged 14 runs per game thanks to a solid-hitting and aggressive-running lineup that includes seniors Caden Williams, Jacob Hornbrook, Cody Pellerin and Rob Finn — an impact transfer from Illinois.
Other contributors include juniors Blake Collins and Jon Socobasin, sophomore Dawson Critchley and freshman catcher Tony Dana, who had a three-run homer and a two-run double in his first varsity game.
Williams and Finn are the Blue Devils’ top pitchers with Hornbrook also seeing considerable duty, but the pitching staff will be tested as Thursday’s Downeast Athletic Conference matchup at Machias marked the first of six games in nine days.
That stretch includes back-to-back road contests Friday and Saturday at Houlton and Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln, both top-six teams in the current Class C North Heal points and considered the toughest teams on the Blue Devils’ schedule.
“Houlton and Mattanawcook are always strong and they’re having good seasons this year, too, so those are the ones that are really going to determine where we stand and what we look like,” Rohde said.
“If our pitching can hold up that will be big for us and when teams put the ball in play we’ve got to make the plays. We can’t afford to give those other teams extra outs. When you play a team like Houlton or Mattanawcook, if you give them an extra out they’re going to take advantage,”
Rohde also noted the importance of defense in helping to keep the pitch count down, an especially important factor given the heavy volume of upcoming games.
“The games are starting to logjam up, which makes pitch count huge because once you get past 95 pitches now you’ve lost your pitcher for four days and that’s a long stretch with as many games as we’ve got coming up,” he said.
Calais follows its three straight road contests to close out this week with three straight home games next week against Shead of Eastport on Tuesday, Washington Academy of East Machias on Wednesday and Machias on May 18.
“I told the boys that we’ll worry about (this Thursday) and after that we’ll worry about Friday and go from there,” said Rohde, “because if you look too far ahead you end up overlooking a team and the next thing you know you’re losing a game you shouldn’t lose.
“We can’t overlook anybody.”
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