Prep baseball: ‘Cardiac Cats’ of Whitney win thrilling Division I championship game
Jace Gillmore is as confident as he is poised, and why not? No one saw this train coming, and here’s Gillmore still shoveling in his share of coal to keep it humming along.
The Whitney High School junior ace explained Thursday night after the biggest game of his team’s remarkable postseason run that this journey was something they anticipated. The Wildcats call themselves the “Cardiac Cats” while everyone else is calling them a sudden force on the Sac-Joaquin Section baseball landscape with just one senior starting position player, leadoff man Dillon Castellanos.
Gillmore improved to 11-0 with another masterful effort, and the Wildcats scratched out two runs in the bottom of the third inning to lift the second-seeded Wildcats past No. 4 McClatchy 2-1 at Sacramento City College. It’s a feat no honest soul outside this roster could have expected.
Whitney won its first section baseball championship, doing so at the highest classification of Division I in front of an overflow crowd at Union Stadium, where everyone peers down on the action from raised seats, a gathering that included scores of players and coaches from other programs. Teams may be looking up at this program for awhile now.
Whitney took down a storied Lions program, whose campus is barely a mile away. McClatchy came in 28-3, featured a 10-0 ace in Gabe Henderson and the area’s top player and Major League Baseball prospect in slugging catcher Malcolm Moore. The Wildcats came in with rolling momentum and nothing to lose.
“We knew we could do this,” Gillmore said. “It’s what we do. It’s what you dream for. We knew it’d be an insane, packed place, and it got us going.”
Whitney had it going all season, a significant bounce back after enduring some lean seasons. The Wildcats went 7-17 in 2018, 11-17 in 2019 and 7-19 last spring. Now they’re 28-5, winners of the stacked Sierra Foothill League and victors in 11 of their last 12 outings. And there’s more: The first CIF Northern California Regional tournament start Tuesday, a single-elimination event at home sites (brackets will be released by the CIF by Sunday).
From the bottom to this in swift order. Who does that? These Wildcats did under their alum coach Jackson Watt, in his fifth season and very much enjoying playoff mode over survival mode.
“It’s a great group, the ‘Cardiac Cats,’ and it’s amazing to see what they’ve done,” said Watt, a history teacher on the Placer County campus.
Watt played four years of baseball at Willamette University in Oregon, graduating in 2016. By 2018, he was hired to lead the baseball program by then-Whitney athletic director Jason Feuerbach, now an associate commissioner for the section. When Feuerbach handed Watt the blue championship banner on the infield, the friends embraced and laughed for a long moment, before Watt walked toward the Whitney crowd to soak it all in.
“He brought me here,” Watt said. “I wanted to be on the baseball field after college. I realized I wasn’t going to be a pro player. This is what I wanted to do. It’s been amazing.”
Whitney touched McClatchy’s ace for eight hits, though Henderson otherwise was superb, striking out seven and walking one. Tyler Allen gave Whitney a 1-0 lead with an RBI single and Shane Saunders sent him home with a base hit to make it 2-0. It held up against the crafty Henderson, and Gillmore held the prolific Lions of the Metropolitan Conference in check. Moore, the MLB prospect, was responsible for his team’s RBI, a sacrifice fly in the sixth, scoring Jaylen Hodges.
The 6-foot-2 Gillmore struck out four, walked none and allowed just four singles against a team that belted 111 extra-base hits, including 26 home runs, 13 of them from Moore, who now has 51 RBI and a .511 average.
“There isn’t a more complete pitcher around,” Watt said. “He has four pitches. You don’t see that in high school.”
Gillmore ended the game with a strikeout, and then gloves were hurled into the air to start the celebration.
“It was a heavyweight fight,” said McClatchy coach Mike de Necochea, whose team came in having 15 of 16 games. “It was great to the last rounds. Gillmore was outstanding, really poised. So was Gabe.”
McClatchy also advances to the NorCals but does so deflated. The Lions were in their first section final since winning it in 1998 under coach Brian LoForte.
“The good thing is we have another shot to do something special,” de Necochea said. “It’ll be tough to get them back up.”
Whitney won’t have any sort of trouble staying inspired. Other Wildcat starters are second baseman Jax Gimenez, centerfielder Gavin McClendon, first baseman Jonathan Vavak, third baseman Nathan Erickson and shorstop Luke Oyler, each of them vital. And there’s the ace. Gillmore said Watt and the coaching staff that includes former Vista del Lago head coach Scott Seffens have been ideal mentors.
“We have a great connection with the coaches,” GIllmore said. “We love coach Watt. He’s a great dude.”
A great dude and the Cardiac Cats. They roar on.
This story was originally published May 27, 2022 at 7:32 AM.