By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

ALBANY, Ore.–  Patience is a virtue.  And that’s more so in sports, especially in college at any level waiting for your turn to play.

For Sprague-grad and Linn-Benton Community College freshman Jack Muth, the frosh has seen limited playing time.  He’s seen action in five of the Roadrunners first 42 games before Sunday’s doubleheader second game against Chemeketa.  Of those five games, he pitched five-and-a-third innings with three strikeouts.and picked up a win against.Clackamas, a 5-0 win over the Cougars in three innings of work.

“It’s been a fun season watching the older guys, learn from them and talk to them.  Ask them what they’re doing out there, how they’re doing it, what works well for them, what doesn’t work well for them.  Everyone just wants everyone to do better, we care about each other a lot, so when everyone goes out and does something good, we all celebrate it and make sure they know they’re doing a good job for us,” Muth said.

The 2021 Olympian-grad entered the game in the fourth inning and pitched the next four innings.  For the first three innings he excelled, keeping the Storm off-balanced while battling  2019 South Salem pitcher Elijah Enomoto-Haole who was doing the same to his Linn-Benton offense.

“It’s cool.  I haven’t seen Elijah in a few years since he’s a couple of years older than me.  But it was cool, going back to those times when I was a younger kid where those Varsity teams came to play and play those older guys and hoped that I would get there one day.  Getting to play against him in college is pretty cool.”

Sunday’s outing was the longest outing of Muth’s young collegiate career going four innings, but as well as he started, some fatigue did begin to sink in during the seventh inning as the Storm turned the 8-3 lead that the Roadrunners had down to a 8-5 lead.  Simple conditioning was what Muth pointed towards as he hopes that comes around down the road as his number continues to be called upon to perform for his squad.

“I think I did pretty well out there.  It’s been hard trying to stay conditioned and stuff without getting out there all the time. But I trust my stuff and I know if I believe in myself and my team believes in me that I can go out there and do great things,” Muth said.  “I didn’t feel it as great as it did in that fourth inning (pitching), but I kept pounding through because everyone was cheering me on and it made me feel a lot better about everything.  When you know everyone has your back, you know they’ll make those plays behind your back for you.”

Muth finished the game with three strikeouts in four innings pitching as Linn-Benton wrapped up the NWAC South Region with their doubleheader sweep of Chemeketa 12-3, 11-5 Sunday at Linn-Benton Community College.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald