Colfax’s offense fires up late as Falcons roar past Marysville in prep baseball

Two four-run innings was what was needed to lift the Colfax baseball team to its fifth win in six starts, knocking off undefeated Marysville 10-4 Monday afternoon.

The first scoring of the game came during a flurry of action in the bottom of the third inning as four straight hits brought home three runs for Marysville. Colfax quickly answered with three runs of its own in the top of the fourth to tie it up, but conceded an RBI double in the bottom half and trailed once again, 4-3.

The go-ahead run for the Falcons came in the top of the fifth as sophomore Dylan Stallions doubled into left, bringing home Trevor Davis and R.J. Brown. A sacrifice fly by Noah Souza on the next at-bat allowed Michaelangelo Taylor to score, putting a two-run cushion with a 6-4 lead over Marysville.

Stallions said the game and Colfax’s season to this point has reflected how well the team works together, making the wins feel special.

“It’s all about the team,” Stallions said. “We’re all working together, we’re all doing our part, pulling our own weight and at the end we come out with a win. It was awesome.”

Colfax starting pitcher Anthony Packard threw four scoreless innings out of the six he pitched before being relieved by Chase Pfeifer in the seventh. Coach Chris Nave had high praise for his starting pitcher’s performance.

“Packard threw a gem,” he said. “The kid’s the ultimate competitor and as long as he’s on the mound, I have full confidence every time that we’re going to compete and we have a chance”

Another four runs in the top of the seventh virtually eliminated any comeback hopes for Marysville and the game ended after a double play where the Marysville batter struck out and the runner on first was tagged out before getting back on base.

With the win, Colfax has already equaled the amount of conference wins it had last year before the season ended up being canceled. But Pfeifer said the adversity the team faced last season may have been beneficial in the long run.

“I think it was good for our players to face and come through some adversity. And now we’re all out here and we’re playing with a lot of heart,” he said. “We wanted to go undefeated, but now we’re only going to go with one loss.”

Both Stallions and Pfeifer said the team bond and togetherness is what helps make Colfax play their best ball, and Nave agreed with them.

“During all that COVID stuff, baseball was the only thing the kids could cling to and they got tight, even though we were in pods, they were close and that was the one thing they had the normalcy in their life,” he said. “And because of that, they got that connection and they’ve become close. They’re learning how to compete as a team finally so that’s good.”

Nave said while the team is playing well at the moment, they still haven’t reached peak performance yet.

“We got a ways to go,” Nave said. “I would like our offense to step up a little bit more. We’ve got guys that can pitch and we can play a good defense but we got to get our bats going a little bit more.”