The Cashmere High School baseball team made a mockery of the Caribou Trail League this season, rolling through its regular-season conference schedule unblemished.

The Bulldogs routinely posted big victories against their overmatched league foes. They have played at a high level all season, but for the most part weren’t tested – until Saturday.

Cashmere had to win two one-run games in Spokane to claim the CTL-Northeast A League Bi-District championship. While coach Jeff Carlson certainly wouldn’t have minded to see his team post two more blowout wins, he acknowledges that his team might be better off in the long run for playing those two tight contests.

“We’ve talked about (the fact that we haven’t been challenged a lot this season) a little bit,” he said. “We’ve known all along that once we got to this (district) tournament that we’d be facing tough teams, and that the games would have a playoff atmosphere. But we played a lot of games over the summer, a lot of tight games, and as a team we were prepared for this. We knew what we were getting into.”

In the first game, Cashmere built a 6-1 lead after five innings and held on for a 10-9 win over Chewelah giving up eight in the final two frames.

In the district title game against Colville, Cashmere was without the services of catcher Tyler McNair, who was ejected from the first game. But Nick Tarver threw a complete game, striking out nine, and Trenton Johnson’s sixth-inning single scored Tarver with what proved to be the winning run in a 4-3 victory.

Carlson was forced to shuffle his lineup for the two district games due to a variety of unforeseen circumstances. Colton Loomis battled through five innings on the mound against Chewelah despite nursing a sore ankle, and as a result he wasn’t able to play the field against Colville, rendering him to designated hitter duties.

The Bulldogs were forced to give Kyle Weiler his first career start behind the plate against Colville, and freshman Casey Reuther made his first career start at first base. They were also without the services of their regular designated hitter, Jake Dilly, who moved to Florida with his family last week.

“He was a staple in our lineup, a guy we counted on,” Carlson said. “We had some guys out, and we had to scratch and claw to put together a lineup, but whoever we called on stepped up and made it happen. We were limited in what we could do because some of the guys had to learn as they go. But to beat a quality team like Colville, that’s a credit to the guys for the focus they had all day.

“We’ve had a real solid lineup, one through nine, all year long. We definitely didn’t have that same fear in the lineup (Saturday) that we’ve had. But the big guys that produced for us all year did today, and they just found a way.”