REDMOND – Six games and two series remain for each Intermountain Conference baseball team, and the race for the conference title is beginning to narrow down. 

Entering last week’s slate of games, three teams – Summit, Bend High and Ridgeview – were all within a game of one another. Now it appears to be a two-team race for the conference championship. 

Ridgeview completed a three-game sweep of Bend High with an 8-2 win Friday evening to keep pace with Summit for the IMC title. The Storm still hold a one-game lead and the series win over the Ravens, the defending IMC champions. Ridgeview is still in need of some help over the next two series if they want a chance at repeating. 

“We knew that we would have to play really good baseball the rest of our league schedule to at least make a good run at the IMC championship or a deep run into state,” said Ridgeview coach Shane Nakamura. “The boys have been preparing hard, they are figuring out how to put it all together.”

Putting it all together on the mound, after a bumpy start to the season, was sophomore Finn Chambers. The all-state pitcher from a year ago returned to form against a talented Lava Bears’ lineup. 

“Earlier in the season, I was a little bit jittery and a little bit jumpy,” Chambers said. “But as the season has gone on, I’ve settled in a little bit more and got my confidence back and I’m starting to throw the way I can.”

Friday’s game didn’t start off well for Chambers. The Lava Bears came out swinging and hit the ball hard, leading to two runs in the first inning.

But the right-hander Chambers settled into a groove, throwing a complete game (the game was called in the top of the sixth inning due to lightning in the area) striking out seven batters, and allowing just six hits and two earned runs. 

“He came back and made great adjustments and you could see the confidence level grow in him,” Nakamura said. “I was like, ‘OK, that is the pitcher, that’s the dude we are looking for.’ Mechanically he has always been solid. I think the thing he needed to figure out is just letting go of his mind and playing free. We have been working on helping him free his mind out there because physically he is there.”

Senior shortstop Logan Nakamura, senior third baseman Jackson Hertel and senior centerfielder Caimen Jensen each collected two hits and drove in a run for Ridgeview (12-5 overall, 7-2 IMC) against Bend (13-7, 5-4).  

With the sweep of the Lava Bears, the Ravens have now won six games in a row and have swept their last two series. It is exactly what they needed to keep challenging Summit for the IMC title.

The series against the Storm April 15-18, in which the Ravens dominated the first game then dropped the next two, including an 18-0 loss in the series finale, served as a valuable lesson for the Ravens. 

“That series gave us a reality check,” Chambers said. “We were cruising through the nonleague schedule. It showed us that we aren’t going to kill every team and we need to respect every opponent that we play and give it everything we have every single pitch.”

Ridgeview will play its three-game series against Mountain View starting on Tuesday, while Bend will face another challenging test when it takes on Summit on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 

“We need to do our job and we need to hope that someone can steal one or two from Summit,” Nakamura said. “It is baseball and you don’t know what is going to happen. All we can do is just keep going one step at a time and one out at a time.”