PAGE A14, KEIZERTIMES, APRIL 14, 2017
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Rally Celtics
Lady Celts come back at South Salem
By DEREK WILEY
Of the Keizertimes
SALEM—Coming off the
bench, McNary senior Hannah
Carr’s approach at the plate
was simple—just make contact
instead of trying to win the
game with one big swing.
Down by six runs with two
outs in the top of the sixth in-
ning, that’s exactly what the
Lady Celts needed.
With two strikes, Carr sin-
gled through the middle of
the infi eld to begin a rally that
ended with a McNary come-
from-behind 9-8 victory on
Thursday, April 6 at South Sa-
lem.
“The entire whole game
I just tried to stay in it,” Carr
said. “I try really hard to be a
really huge impact on the team
and try to stay in the game and
pump everyone up and keep
the energy going.”
The Lady Celts fell behind
3-1 and did little on offense
until the fourth inning when
South Salem pitcher Maygen
McGrath walked the bases
loaded but got Nadia Witt to
ground out to end the threat.
The Saxons appeared they
would make McNary pay, put-
ting two runners on base with
no outs in the bottom of the
fourth but pitcher Faith Dan-
ner, who threw all seven in-
nings to earn the win, caught
a line drive and turned a triple
play to end the inning.
However, South Salem did
cash in an inning later. With
one out in the fi fth, Erin El-
more hit a grand slam to give
KEIZERTIMES/Derek Wiley
Tyler Covalt, left, celebrates with Brendan Frizelle after scoring
a run in the bottom of the sixth inning against West Albany.
McNary evens baseball
series in extra innings
KEIZERTIMES/Derek Wiley
McNary junior Nadia Witt, right, slides home head fi rst to score the Lady Celts’ fi rst run of the
game at South Salem on Thursday, April 6.
the Saxons a 7-1 lead.
McGrath then retired the
fi rst two batters in the sixth
before Carr led the McNary
come back.
After Sabella Alfaro singled
and Witt walked to load the
bases, Alexa Cepeda singled on
a line drive to left fi eld to score
Carr from third. Haley Ebner
then drove in Alfaro and Witt
with a base hit to center fi eld.
Cepeda and Ebner scored on
an error to get the Lady Celts
within 7-6.
“Somebody gets a hit and it
just kind of sparks other peo-
ple and then when I think you
string those together like we
did, I just think the girls started
getting confi dence,” McNary
head coach Kevin Wise said.
“She (McGrath) had us off. She
was doing a good job. We had
opportunities but we weren’t
able to cash in. We didn’t hit
well before that (sixth inning)
and all of the sudden it just
came together.”
McNary had just three hits
against McGrath entering the
sixth.
“I think we fi gured out
where she was throwing us and
what she was throwing,” Wise
said.
“There was one point
where she was throwing an
illegal pitch. She had a curve
that she was really coming out-
side on and he (umpire) made
her come back under a little
more and I think that changed
the path of the ball.”
Please see LADY, Page 16
By DEREK WILEY
Of the Keizertimes
Battling through the rain,
McNary took advantage of six
West Albany errors to come
from behind to defeat the
Bulldogs 6-5 in eight innings
on Tuesday, April 11.
The Celtics trailed 5-0 go-
ing into the bottom of the
sixth when Josiah Gilbert
singled and then scored on a
ground ball by Daniel Johnson
to get on the scoreboard. Tyler
Covalt also singled in the in-
ning and scored on an error to
get McNary within 5-2.
“I was extremely proud of
our efforts in the last couple
innings and to be perfectly
honest I was not happy with
our competitiveness and our
intensity basically through fi ve
innings,” McNary head coach
Larry Keeker said. “(Curtis)
Zamora, he was really good at
mixing up his pitches so he re-
ally had our hitters off balance.
We just weren’t aggressive on
enough pitches that were in
the zone, maybe a little tenta-
tive against him. We just didn’t
have that competitiveness, that
battle at the plate that I like to
see, until we got him off the
mound. We just couldn’t get
anything going against one of
their really good pitchers.”
With Zamora out of the
game, Joshua Benson and
Matthew Ismay hit back-to-
back singles to lead off the
seventh. After Benson scored
on an error, pinch hitter Tyler
Ellerton, facing a 0-2 count,
singled to drive in Ismay and
get the Celtics within a run.
With the bases loaded and
two outs, Gilbert scored from
third on a balk to tie the game
at 5-5.
Please see RALLY, Page 15
Coach gives McNary
experienced voice
By DEREK WILEY
Of the Keizertimes
In his mid 60s, Bob Plantz
was still giving lessons but
thought he was probably done
coaching baseball on a team
when he got a call from a for-
mer player.
It was Larry Keeker at Mc-
Nary. He needed a pitching
coach and wanted to know if
Plantz was interested. The two
met at Applebee’s.
“It was a little bit of a sur-
prise,” Plantz said. “I had to
check with my wife and she
said, ‘Get out of the house.’ It
was real easy (to say yes). In all
seriousness, Larry does a fan-
tastic job. I would not be do-
ing this with just anybody. He
created as atmosphere for all
the coaches.”
Plantz began coaching in
1967, leading the freshman
team at Wilson High School
in Tacoma, Wash., while stu-
dent teaching at the Univer-
sity of Puget Sound. Plantz’s
fi rst teaching job was at Silver-
ton, where he again coached
freshmen. He then became
the head junior varsity coach
at Mt. Angel.
“I guess I knew from the
time I was a sophomore in
high school that I wanted to
teach and coach,” Plantz said.
“I grew up in California and I
had teachers and coaches that
really made an impression on
me.”
After giving law school
a try, Plantz got back into
coaching at Whiteaker in
1974. One of his players was
Keeker. They were also neigh-
bors and Keeker served as
Plantz’s classroom aid.
Plantz left Whiteaker in
1978 to become the fi rst head
baseball coach at McKay High
School.
In 1983, Plantz’s team de-
feated Corvallis in the last
game of the regular season to
win the school’s fi rst league
championship in any sport.
“That was pretty special,”
Plantz said. “It was really a
great bunch of kids.”
On that McKay team was
Deputy Chief of Keizer police
Jeff Kuhns and Dave Brund-
age, who went on to become
an All-American at Oregon
State and made it to AAA
with the Seattle Mariners. He
now manages the San Fran-
cisco Giants AAA team—Sac-
ramento River Cats.
“Dave had a quality you
don’t coach,” Plantz said. “He
seemed to have no fear of fail-
ure.”
After fi ve years at McKay,
Plantz went to Newberg,
where he coached baseball
and softball before retiring in
1998. He had a Grand Slam
batting cage franchise in West
Salem and then started doing
lessons at the Courthouse.
Retirement didn’t stick and
Plantz assisted Jerry Walker
when he started the baseball
program at Blanchet Catholic
School. But when Walker left,
so did Plantz.
But that retirement didn’t
last either as Plantz joined
Keeker at McNary fi ve years
ago.
“I guess I just love it,”
Plantz said. “What I’m doing
now, just being an assistant,
it’s just pure coaching. I don’t
have to do budgets. I don’t
have to do fundraisers and all
the fi eld maintenance and all
the head coach responsibili-
ties. That’s Larry’s worry. I just
go coach.”
Plantz biggest point of em-
phasis is teaching good me-
chanics to avoid injuries.
“We start by making sure
they use their legs and their
back muscles, try to take the
strain off their arms,” Plantz
said. “A lot of kids come in,
they throw hard but they put
terrible strain on their arm.
We try to teach them safe me-
chanics.”
Plantz said he’s never been a
yeller or screamer and stopped
throwing batting practice
years ago when “the buzzards
were circling around my arm.”
He and Keeker call games
together.
“When we get somebody
out, it’s my idea. When a guy
cracks one, it’s Larry’s fault,”
Plantz joked. “We have a lot of
fun with it.”
Two pitching performances
stand out in Plantz’s time at
McNary.
In 2014, the Celtics opened
league play with a 1-0 win
KEIZERTIMES/Derek Wiley
McNary head baseball coach Larry Keeker and pitching coach Bob Plantz talk in between
innings during a recent varsity game.
over South Salem as Mc-
Nary junior Mickey Walker
out-pitched Sam Tweedt, the
reigning Pitcher of the Year,
who went on to sign with Or-
egon State.
“That was amazing and
so much fun,” Plantz said. “It
was a remarkable accomplish-
ment.”
The second came in 2015.
Down in Arizona, with West
Salem watching after playing
the game before, McNary se-
nior Nick LaFountaine threw
45 pitches and couldn’t get
out of the fi rst inning. But
LaFountaine came back to
defeat West Salem 8-3 later in
the season.
“They were licking their
chops and he beat them,”
Plantz said. “It was just really
satisfying for this kid to start
out that way and battle and
compete.”
Plantz had surgery for pros-
tate cancer just before Christ-
mas. His prognosis is optimis-
tic but he doesn’t know how
much longer he’ll keep coach-
ing.
“I guess that’s probably
made me appreciate it even a
little more,” he said. “It’s just
open ended.”
Keeker is happy to have
Plantz on his staff as long as he
wants to be there.
“He’s helped baseball play-
ers literally at all different lev-
els so that experience alone is
certainly valuable to our pro-
gram,” Keeker said.
“He just has a good per-
spective on the game. He loves
the game itself. It’s been a part
of his life for a long, long time.
Probably the most important
thing is he’s just passionate
about working with baseball
players and specifi cally the
kids here at McNary. He’s
emotional just about every
season at the end. He’s invest-
ed so much of himself that he
gets emotional about it.”