By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

KEIZER, Ore.–  A hundred wins is incredible.  A feat all in itself.  But two hundred wins?  Two hundred wins really shows off your longevity as a Head Coach.  

And that’s something that West Salem’s Ty Nicholson has shown off through his many years as Head Coach.  Maybe not to the level as South Salem’s Scott McCormick just yet, but the duo do have a funny joke about it in passing about accomplishing milestones like the one Nicholson just achieved Wednesday afternoon against McNary in terms of longevity.

And though there were some emotions post-game, as the Titans held off the Celtics 9-7 to hand Nicholson his 200th career win, emotions hit Nicholson a bit when there was a little ceremony honoring the Titan coach in reaching the milestone postgame.  

But in typical Nicholson-fashion however, as he calms his emotions of the milestone, he’s already thinking about the next game and helping his team reach the goals they’ve sought out to achieve this Spring.

“I’m just blessed to have good kids.  Coaches coach, but if you don’t have good players, it kind of defeats the purpose.  I’ve just been blessed to have good kids through my career and eventually you win.  Scott McCormick has way more than me and he said, ‘Oh it means we’re old.  We’ve been doing this a long time,” laughs Nicholson.  “But it’s a blessing to have good kids.  

“It’s fun to get it, but we have a lot left in our season and they have goals that they want to reach and I’m more interested in the goals  that they have versus my own. I’m not a big personal goal person.  Years ago I saw 200-wins and thought, ‘oh that’ll be pretty cool’…and honestly I forgot.  I wasn’t thinking about it.”

And had the veteran coach had thought about it in passing in warm-ups or during the exchanging of lineup cards, McNary made sure that his and his team’s focus wasn’t on that accomplishment.  Because the Celtics came to play Wednesday afternoon in the Central Valley Conference game at McNary High School.  Moments here and in there occurred in game that made Nicholson look as if he was going to blow a gasket while McNary looked to pull even in their league record coming out of the day.

Nothing more so frustrating if you were a West Salem fan, or feeling confident if you were a Celtic fan following a sixth run bottom of the fourth inning that swung a 5-1 Titan lead into a 7-5 McNary lead by innings end.

Energy was high for the Celtics coming out of that inning, they’ve been in a few of these dogfights before having falling to South Salem and Sprague 2-1 and 3-1 respectively recently.  Something that’s good to see as they look to build upon it for the remainder of the league season.

“It’s been important, we’ve been getting our energy up.  Getting bat on ball and that’s the most important thing for us right now, our defense is looking pretty good right now.  This game really showed how much improvement we’ve been making,” said Josalyn Netzel, who had four hits and 2RBI’s in the game.  “Our energy just took a shot up (In the fourth inning) and that’s what made it happen.”

West Salem didn’t back down to the pressure.  No, they rose to the occasion as a matter of fact.  They began chipping away at the deficit before taking the lead in the sixth and shutting down the Celts to close out the game.

“It was good, we haven’t faced too much adversity and that was some adversity.  We got our bats going, we struck some hits together.  But when you get a score like that, you have to string something together and one person isn’t going to do it.  I told them that was a complete team win.  Our defense, our hitting came around and changed the game a little bit,” said Nicholson.

Courtney Gills led West Salem with two triples and had three hits in the win.   Celina Ball also had three hits on the day for the Titans.  Natalie Macik had the only other multi-hit games for the Celtics, going 2-for-4 with 2RBIs 

Photos By Jeremy McDonald