The All-Star Game of the West Coast League is in the rearview mirror and with the all-important second half of the season underway, the Bend Elks are thinking playoffs.

With 18 WCL games left on the schedule, the Elks are well within reach of securing one of four South Division bids and making their first postseason appearances since 2015 — the year they won the WCL title.

“Now that everyone is here we have gotten settled in,” said infielder Kaleb Karpstein, a Bend High grad who now plays for Northwest Nazarene in Nampa, Idaho. “We just have to maintain that drive to win and keep doing what we have been doing.”

The Elks stacked a lot of wins, including a stretch where they won eight of nine WCL games earlier in the season to put them in position for the postseason.

Summer baseball can be a bit of a

crapshoot. Some players are late getting to their teams due to an extended season with their college teams, and others will have to leave early to report to their college teams in the later part of the summer.

Rolling with the ever-changing landscape of summer ball has been the Elks’ modus operandi pretty much all season.

Initially, the Elks were led by Danny Sales who had spent the previous two seasons as an assistant coach before landing the head coaching job this summer. Less than two weeks into the season he accepted an assistant coaching job at Seattle University and had to step down as the Elks coach.

Enter Allen Cox, who landed in Bend all the way from Myrtle Beach for the summer mainly because of a birth in the family and connections made on the baseball diamond over the years.

Two years ago, Cox was in Bend and went to watch a game at Vince Genna Stadium, he noticed a familiar face on the coaching staff — assistant coach Tyler Graham. Cox and Graham had coached the Okotoks Dawgs, a summer college team in the Western Canadian Baseball League.

Cox has a niece who lives in Bend and she recently had a baby. So when Cox’s wife said she would be spending a lot of time in Bend to spend time with family, Cox reached out to Graham to see what the chances were to coach the Elks.

With several previous Elks coaches moving on to college jobs, there were plenty of openings and Sales pulled the trigger to bring Cox onto the staff.

Now Cox is not only leading the Elks this season, but next season as well.

“It is just the small world of baseball and the fraternity we have,” Cox said. “Then Danny leaves after two weeks, then they asked if I want to be the head guy, and I said ‘let’s do it.’”

Ty Silva, an outfielder for USC and in his second summer with the Elks was fully expecting to play for Sales again this summer. And when he finally arrived in Bend there was a new coach. But the transition was a smooth one.

“Allen has been great all summer,” Silva said. “He’s been a great dude to be around. Especially for a summer coach. He wants to win but also understands that there are parts of being a young adult during the summer.”

Despite all the changes, the Elks find themselves in a rather advantageous position heading into the final weeks of the regular season.

The Corvallis Knights, the “Evil Empire” and winners of seven straight WCL titles, have already clinched one of the four division playoff titles by having the best record in the first half of the season. A second playoff spot will go to the winner of the second half of the season. The Elks are currently looking up at Ridgefield, Portland and Corvallis in the second-half standings.

That leaves the Elks needing to have one of the best overall records (both first and second half) to reach the postseason. If the season ended this week, the Elks would make it. Entering Friday’s three-game series against Corvallis the Elks have the third-best overall record (21-15) in the South Division.

The remaining schedule is pretty favorable for the Elks. However, two of their final six three-game series are against the Corvallis Knights and end the season with a series against Wenatchee, the North-Division leaders.

The remaining three series are against teams — Yakima Valley, Cowlitz and Springfield — that the Elks have fared well against this summer. In 12 games against those teams, the Elks have a 10-2 record.

If the Elks steal a couple of wins against Corvallis and handle business against teams they’ve already faced, then the team could see its near decade-long playoff drought come to an end.

“We need to win a couple games against the Knights to get momentum going for that playoff push,” Karpstein said. “

But with the playoffs being the carrot at the end of the stick, the Elks are ready to make a playoff push.

“We are going to finish strong, we are going to show up every day and do it,” Silva said. “Regardless of what kind of season it is, playing in any sort of playoff environment is a different energy. It brings the team aspect back to summer ball. Once the playoffs come around, everyone wants to lock in and win.”