Baseball season recap
Photo courtesy of Celeste Bates.
May 22, 2023
The Paly Varsity Boys Baseball team wrapped up their year, finishing the season with a 13-12 record.
Pitchers Nate Donaker (‘24) and Henry Harding (‘25) had great individual outings and shut down many teams throughout the season.
Catchers Dexter Cleveringa (‘25) and Russ Filter (‘23) also had great seasons, although Cleveringa’s ended early after a concussion during a game against Los Gatos.
The Vikings played their first and only CCS game against Branham, losing 10-0, an unfortunate end to a promising season.
“Overall the season was solid,” Donaker said. “In the end, we hoped for a different outcome but we will learn from it and be back better than ever next year.”
“I think the season was full of growing pains,” Isaiah Walker (‘25) said. “We were young and battled with a lot of injuries which made it tough.”
Donaker, Filter, and Kanghee Cho (‘25) were awarded all-league first team in the DeAnza league. Zach Thom (‘24) was awarded all-league second team, while Coco Vonderhaar (‘25) and Harding were honorable mentions.
“Although it wasn’t the outcome we hoped for at the beginning of the year, it still wasn’t a failure and I’m excited for our future,” Walker said.
A lot of underclassmen were forced to step up, with only four seniors on the roster, and two of them, Sal Meehan and Tyler Mostofizadeh, battled injuries all season long. It felt like there was a new impact player each game, a new mentality that the team was forced to adapt.
“I would say that the season was overall very unlucky because of the loss of some of our best players to injuries”, Julian Davis (‘24) said.
At the end of the day, we never will know the full potential of this team. It was an optimistic outlook heading into the year, but expectations fell short due to a variety of factors. Although the squad did not have much of the prowess of the previous season, it was an excellent step to getting back to that stage. With many non-seniors gaining a ton of good varsity minutes, the seasons to come should come with triumph.
