Coeur d’Alene baseball will send five players to same college program

It’s not often a high school baseball program from the Northwest sends five players to play in college. But it is truly unique when one prep program sends five players to the same college.

As the Inland Empire League baseball winds down its regular season in advance of districts next week, the Coeur d’Alene Vikings are wrapping up their games and trying to squeeze in practices where they can.

For five of Coeur d’Alene’s six seniors, though, they know their baseball careers won’t end with the team’s last game this season. In fact, they will all remain teammates since they all committed to one college program.

Jackson Sumner, Kallen Langley and Thomas Robinson, along with twins Trevor and Cameron Luckey, have all committed to attend Big Bend CC to play baseball next season. The five don’t even have to learn a new nickname, as the Moses Lake community college mascot is the Vikings as well.

“Once a Viking, always a Viking, I guess,” Coeur d’Alene coach Nick Mahin joked of his five players last week, after CdA beat Lake City 3-2 in the first of a scheduled doubleheader before rain, wind and even hail postponed the second game.

It’s probably no coincidence that two other former CdA players are already at Big Bend – outfielder Nathan English and utility player Tanner Toepke.

“Tanner Toepke talked to me a lot about it. He just said how he really liked the coaches and how they know their stuff,” said Langley last week, while huddled in Coeur d’Alene’s Ted Page Field press box trying to avoid the rain and hail.

“For me, it was the coaches, the school and the facility there, too,” Sumner said. “The atmosphere there was great. It’s baseball, and having these guys there with me is super cool.”

Mahin thought the influence of the older players was helpful to his current charges.

“(They) might have helped out a little bit,” Mahin joked. “We’ve got Nate Englsh and Tanner Teopke from my first team there. I’ll have seven Vikings continuing on to be Vikings, so that’s a pretty cool story.

“I think the greatest thing for those guys is that when you get to the next level you gotta dig down deep and find out who you are anyway, so to have a comfort level around with a core group of guys you’ve grown up playing with is only going help them.”

Usually, the end of the season means seniors going their separate ways. For the “Big Bend Five,” it’ll only be a temporary situation, as they disperse to play for different summer league teams. The Luckeys, for instance, are playing in Colorado this summer. But they’ll all reconvene in September for fall ball at Big Bend.

The possibility to play and make an impact right away was enticing to the group. “(Big Bend) returns nine guys,” Cameron Luckey said, “and seven of them are arms, so hopefully there’s a chance we’ll all be able to play next year, and that we’ll all get a chance to compete.”

Mahin stated that a “strong compete level” is of the things that he tries to instill in his players and he hopes that continues for them as they move on.

“As a program here, at the end of the day what we really want to do is to help these guys for the next level,” Mahin said. “And not just make it there, but when they get there, become an instant part of the program – someone that contributes right away when they get there.”

Robinson exemplified the words of his coach when asked how his prep experience prepared him for college ball. “Always be ready to go,” he said. “Ready to grind, right? We look for an excuse to work, not give up and try to get better every day.”

The Coeur d’Alene coach sees an opportunity for the players to grow and use each other as a barometer for that growth.

“For most of those guys, they know junior college is a great opportunity but it’s also not the end of the road for them hopefully, if they keep working hard,” Mahin said. “The great thing about those guys going together as a group is that they can push each other. They did this year and they can keep continuing on at the next level pushing each other.”

Coeur d’Alene currently sits fourth (3-7) in the tight Inland Empire League 5A standings after getting swept by rival Lake City on Tuesday and losing a game in the standings because of a pitch-count violation. The Vikings have a couple of make-up games to play, and then district playoffs start next week, with a likely trip to first-place Lewiston looming.

For Mahin, a somewhat down year doesn’t detract from the bigger picture of helping prepare young athletes for whatever their future may hold.

“I think for us – me and my coaching staff – we pride ourselves on that,” Mahin said. “We want to win ballgames and compete. But at the end of the day we’re just trying to get these young men ready for the next step – whether that be life, or junior college baseball or college baseball, whatever it is.”

But it is a source of pride for Mahin to send these five athletes on to the next level with the same program.

“It’s actually a pretty cool story,” Mahin said. “Those guys really are a band of brothers. They all got the opportunity to go on to the next level. … It’s pretty much the core group of our team right now, and they’re all heading off to the next level together and it’ll be a good experience for all of them.”