Pocatello High School head softball coach Josh Naylor still didn’t know what to make of it 24 hours later.
And it was completely understandable.
Saturday was a long time coming with years of building and unimaginable heartbreak along the way. But the Thunder endured it all for the first state championship in program history following a 3-1 win over perennial power Bishop Kelly in the Class 4A final at Coeur d’Alene High School.
“To be honest, I’m still trying to figure it out a little bit,” Naylor said. “I’m so happy for our program. And I’m just so happy for the girls and so proud of them. Just an amazing bunch of players that never quit and believed in each other and overcame a lot of odds as a team.
“It’s just hard to put it into words right now. It seems like kind of a dream.”
One that began a decade ago with his hiring.
Naylor took over a program in 2014 nearly three years removed from its last postseason appearance. Pocatello also hadn’t won a game at state in four years.
But he quickly turned things around.
The Thunder not only made it back to the postseason, but brought home a third-place trophy in just his second year at the helm. They took third in 2019, as well.
Pocatello has posted a winning record and made the playoffs in every year but one since 2015.
“It was kind of just like a .500 type program. It was my first high school head coaching job,” said Naylor, a Pocatello alum who had been coaching baseball and softball across town at Century. “It was a long process of just trying to teach them the consistency, the training and the mindset of knowing what it takes in order to be great.
“If you want something, it’s all the lonely work and the hours that people don’t see that are the difference in what you’ll be when everyone else is watching. We didn’t just have tryouts and take the field. All of these girls played summer ball and I coach a lot of them, too. So that made it easy to maintain the consistency and the culture that we were trying to build.”
It appeared like all of that was going to culminate in a championship last year.
Pocatello advanced to its first-ever state title game with a perfect 29-0 record. It had just 10-runned Skyview, the reigning Class 5A back-to-back state champion that had dropped down to the 4A level. So all the Thunder needed to do was beat the Hawks one final time and had two chances to do so in the double-elimination style tournament.
They had remarkably still gotten there even after the death of a teammate at the beginning of the season.
KyLee JoAnn Decker was always the life of the party. She was the only one on the team who could correctly do all of the dances from the popular video game “Fortnite,” brave enough to attempt chugging a whole bottom of maple syrup during team dinners and wear the same two shirts as sophomore catcher Azlinn Bullock.
“Her and I had two shirts that we always would wear. And we never meant to wear them on the same days,” said Bullock with a laugh “I still remember that. I still have those two shirts and every time I look at them I’m reminded of her. We’d always wear them on accident and we’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re matching today.’ And it was so funny. She was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
She was also quite the promising player on varsity. After playing at both first base and in the outfield, Naylor was going to try her out at catcher. Decker was a little skeptical about the position change at first. But she quickly embraced it by buying and showing off her brand new catcher’s mitt to Naylor.
But a week later, Decker took her own life.
She was 16.
“We just had them all down in our training hitting facility and we broke the news to them,” Naylor said. “That was probably one of the toughest moments of my life. The pain in everyone’s faces.
“There’s not one person that didn’t like her. Not one person at all. Everyone loved KyLee. It was just devastating.”
Her No. 24 jersey was brought and hung in the dugout for the remainder of that season. Pocatello also stacked its gloves up and did a team prayer for her on whatever base was closest to its own dugout.
Both of those traditions continued on this season.
“It’s just to let her know that we are playing for her and grateful that we got to know her,” Bullock said.”
Which is what made last season’s state championship games all the more painful.
The Thunder had the state title unceremoniously ripped away from them in 7-3 and 12-10 losses to Skyview. The final game went extra innings.
“It was honestly pretty devastating,” senior pitcher Miah Lusk said. “We thought we had it in the bag. We were going in there pretty confident. And we probably played like we weren’t expecting to lose after a season like that. We kind of just got too ahead of ourselves.
“But I think this year, we were a little more humble and a little more ready to just be scrappy and fight back for anything to get that trophy.”
The Thunder did just that.
Pocatello (26-4) had its backs against the wall Friday after getting 10-runned for the first time in more than two years in a 11-1 six-inning loss to Bishop Kelly. It meant that the Thunder would have to win three consecutive games Saturday for redemption.
No problem.
They started out bright and early at 9 a.m. against Twin Falls in the first of what would be three elimination games. Pocatello fell behind 1-0 in the top of the first and the score stayed that way for the next three innings.
But then Bullock stepped up to the plate with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning. She smacked a two-run line drive single to center field for the first of five unanswered runs for the Thunder in a 5-3 win.
They then returned the favor against the Knights in game one of the finals.
Bullock again set the tone with another one-out, two-run single to center field in the top of the first inning this time around. Those two runs kickstarted a 10-0 run for Pocatello through the first four innings and led to a 15-2 five-inning mercy rule win of its own.
Bullock was one of only two players − Kirstine Kent was the other − to have a hit in all three games. She totaled seven hits, including two triples and a double, for seven RBIs.
“Honestly, looking back at it, I really do think that it was my teammates that helped me there in those stressful moments,” Bullock said. “Knowing that it really was 14 v. 1 − one of our mottos. That all 14 of us players were going to be that one player. It was just the pitcher against 14 of us. It wasn’t just one person in the box. It was all of us.”
They then all rallied around Lusk in the winner-take-all finale.
The Northwest Nazarene University signee was starting in the circle for the third game in a row.
And even after 197 pitches during those first two games, she still had more than enough left in the tank.
Lusk proceeded to throw a one-hitter against the most storied softball program in the state with 13 state championships to its name. The Thunder provided just enough run support for her, too.
Kent scored the game’s first run on a double to right field in the bottom of the first inning. Kate Jolley and Sophie Campbell then both drove in runs in the fourth. That turned out to be all the offense they needed. Bishop Kelly’s only hit and run came on a solo shot to center field from Ava Armuth in the top of the sixth.
But Lusk slammed the door on the Knights (23-5) by retiring the next five batters, including striking out Margaret Acuna on three straight pitches to end the game. It was one of her 13 strikeouts.
She fanned a total of 32 batters, allowed just two earned runs and seven hits in 18 innings of work Saturday.
“Thinking back, it was probably one of my best games the entire season,” Lusk said. “I was completely just filled with the thought of, ‘I’m doing this for my team and I’m gonna get this win for my team.’ So I was ready to put down everything I had left.”
And if Saturday’s win wasn’t already something out straight of a movie, it came on Decker’s 17th birthday.
“I didn’t even know it was her birthday until after the game and someone told me,” Naylor said. “For some reason we weren’t meant to win it last year and we were meant to win it this year on this day for that reason. It’s crazy how things work out sometimes.”
The 26 wins only trail last year’s total for the most in program history. Pocatello also ends the year having won 20 of its final 21 games. It had a 17-game winning streak before Friday’s loss to Bishop Kelly. The Thunder’s only other losses were to 5A’s Thunder Ridge and Owyhee, which was the state runner-up in that classification. They also suffered a 9-8 loss to Vallivue in just the second game of the season.
But Pocatello was nothing short of dominant outside of that. It won a third consecutive Class 4A District V championship and beat opponents by nearly nine runs per game.
“These girls are so special to me,” Lusk said. “I grew up with almost every single one of them and I’ve played summer ball and softball with all of them. So it was a long, long time in the making.
“It’s our final big win that we all got together before we go our separate ways.”
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