Surf's up for No. 1 Oilers

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HUNTINGTON BEACH IS CALIFORNIA’S ORIGINAL “SURF CITY,” known for its 10-mile stretch of uninterrupted sandy coastline and consistent ocean waves that provide excellent year-around surfing conditions and an unrivaled beach culture.

But late last May, the Huntington Beach High School baseball team put their Southern California seaside city in the conservation for something other than “hanging 10” and “bushy, bushy blonde hairdos” when it won the CIF Southern Section Division 1 Championship, the first in the 107 years the school has fielded a baseball team.

It was the biggest moment in the city’s baseball history since the Huntington Beach-based Ocean View team won the 2011 Little League Series Championship, thanks to efforts from kids like Hagen Danner and Nick Pratto, a pair of prominent juniors on this year’s HBHS team. The spring of 2015 was certainly one to remember for head coach Benjamin Medure and his merry band of Oilers, who won 24 of their last 27 games on their way to the Southern Section title.

With five prospects that played impactful roles on that championship team as juniors back for their senior seasons, and with at least three equally impactful juniors also in the fold, Huntington Beach opens the 2016 season holding down the No. 1 spot in the Perfect Game High School Preseason National Top 50 Rankings.

“Number-one in the nation is a crazy thought and if I try to even explain it to our guys, you just can’t really wrap your heads around it,” Medure told PG after learning of the preseason recognition. “There are so many good high school teams out there, and I just think the fact that a lot of our top players have a lot of notoriety has helped us reach that position.”

Corner-infielder/right-hander Logan Pouelsen (UCLA), outfielder Landon Silver (UC Santa Barbara), shortstop Chad Minato (Harvard) and outfielder Dominic Abbadessa (Long Beach State) all return for their senior seasons with NCAA Division I scholarships in their pockets; senior right-hander Mitch Kovary has signed with D-II San Francisco State.

When Medure was asked by PG to comment on his core group of seniors, he insisted on starting the conversation with Minato, the Oilers’ 5-foot-8, 150-pound shortstop who will continue his academic and baseball careers at Harvard in the Ivy League.

“He is basically a second coach on the field for me,” Medure said. “He leads our defense; he leads our offense; he’s just a consummate team player. Everyone follows his lead and with him at the lead we feel like not much can go wrong. He’s the most respected guy on the team and we rely heavily on him.”

The 6-foot, 185-pound Pouelsen is ranked No. 228 nationally by PG as a first baseman, but with his 90-plus mph fastball he’ll be a key cog on the pitching staff, as well; Pouelsen was a member of the 2013 USA Baseball 15u National Team.

“He seems to be unshakable when he’s on the field; there’s not much that gets to him,” Medure said. “We love putting him in pressure situations and he seems to always come through, whether it’s at the plate or on the mound.”

Silver and Abbadessa are outstanding outfield prospects and Kovary is back to bolster the pitching staff after going 4-1 with a 1.68 ERA last season.

Junior right-hander Danner and junior left-hander Pratto – who transferred to HBHS this year from Mater Dei HS in Santa Ana – are the most high-profile players on the Oilers’ roster. Both were not only stars on that 2011 Little League World Series championship team but also stars on the USA Baseball 18u National Team that won its third straight World Championship in September.

The 6-foot-1, 185-pound Danner, a UCLA commit, is ranked the No. 2 overall national prospect in the class of 2017 and the No. 1 junior prospect in California. He flashed a 94 mph fastball at last summer’s Area Code Games and way back in 2014 he was named the Most Valuable Pitcher at the 16u PG WWBA National Championship while pitching for BPA DeMarini Elite.

“Hagen is phenomenal. He’s electric, and when he gets on the mound it’s a sight to be seen,” Medure said. “He’s really come a long way maturity-wise. It’s kind of hard for him to accept the fact that he can be beaten sometimes; he can be hit. But when he’s on and he’s mixing his curveball and his fastball along with his two-seam – I’m a really good coach when he pitches.”

Pratto was named the Most Valuable Player at the 2015 WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup after going 2-0 with a 1.26 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 14 1/3 innings; he was the winning pitcher in Team USA’s 2-1 championship game victory over Japan. A University of Southern California recruit, the 6-foot-2, 195-pound Pratto is ranked the No. 36 overall national prospect in the class of 2017.

“Nick is equally electric, like Hagen,” Medure said. “Nick competes like no one I’ve ever seen before. He is so stubborn and he’s so hard on hitters, and that one-two punch (Danner and Pratto) – along with Pouelsen – if you beat those three guys then my hat’s off to you – you earned it.”

Another newcomer to the Oilers’ program is junior Cory Moore, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound left-hander with an 88 mph fastball who transferred in from Yucaipa (Calif.) High School. Moore gives Medure yet another tool in his shed to help him build yet another championship-caliber club.

Danner and Pratto aren’t the only current Oilers that were a part of that 2011 Little League World Series championship team. Seniors Anthony Martinez and Jack Furry, and juniors Trevor Windisch, Justin Cianca and Dylan Palmer were also part of the celebration in Williamsport, Pa., that summer. And, the fact that three of the players on this year’s roster have experience in USA Baseball international tournaments isn’t something Medure takes for granted, either.

“It definitely makes us better and it makes them tougher when they get here,” he said. “They’re playing in different countries against quality teams from the other side of the world, and they’re playing a different brand of baseball which is tough; you have to make adjustments.”

The rest of the Oilers’ players took a lot of pride in what their teammates on Team USA were experiencing, and Medure told stories about how the guys would stay up until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning to watch Pratto and Danner play over in Japan. It’s all part of a team-building process that should help this year’s group of Oilers take another step forward from last season.

Four prominent seniors were lost to graduation in 2015 and all four are playing collegiately this spring. But this year’s seniors and juniors learned a lot from that championship run a year ago, and Medure is confident that will translate well into this season.

“It’s not so much momentum, but maybe more experience in that we’ve kind of been through it and nothing is really going to shock us,” he said. “We have a lot of returners from that team last year and they learned some valuable lessons throughout the year; last year was not just roses the whole year, not by any means.”

The Oilers won only two of their first seven games at the beginning of last season, but Medure sensed that after that wobbly 2-5 start his players began to relax as the pressure lifted. They fell out of all of the national media outlet’s rankings – HBHS started out at No. 4 in PG’s Preseason Top 50 but was out two weeks into the regular-season – and weren’t even being taken seriously in their own county.

“We had a team meeting and I addressed the fact that there were no more rankings to play for, no one cares about us anymore and in everyone’s eyes we’re just that overrated team that fell by the wayside; now we can just play for each other and we can play baseball the right way,” Medure said.

Things turned around quickly. Medure had accepted a preseason invitation to compete in the prestigious USA Baseball National High School Invitational (NHSI) in Cary, N.C., and the Oilers arrived at the event with their heads held high. They promptly beat St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.) and Puyallup (Wash.) high schools on their way to the semifinals where they were beaten by San Clemente (Calif.). They bounced back to beat White Water (Ga.) in a consolation game and finished 3-1 at blockbuster event.

The Oilers then returned to Southern California to compete in the So Cal-based Boras Classic and went 3-1 at that tournament, as well. The 6-2 mark at those two high-level tournaments changed the course of the 2015 season, and Medure was thrilled when USA Baseball invited his team to return to the NHSI again this spring.

“After we did it last year, I was thinking that this is the best baseball experience I’ve ever had,” he said. “The way they treated us and just how you feel like you’re such an important team and the way the town of Cary gets behind you, it was pretty cool. To be invited back is a huge honor and hopefully we can represent well.”

This season’s appearances at the NHSI tournament and the Boras Classic only add salt to what is already a grueling regular-season for the Oilers. The goal is to fight through it, just like they did a year ago, and earn a spot in the 32-team CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs. Only then will the Oilers allow themselves to consider a second straight Southern Section Championship and a PG National Championship, which in essence is what the preseason No. 1-ranking predicts.

Medure is not sure what he’s supposed to be thinking: “Are we the best team in America? I don’t know. Are we in the argument? Sure, I think so. With the teams that we play and the Section that we’re in, I think you could mention us, but what matters is the end of the year and how we perform and how we finish. We’ve got to win our last game and then we can talk and then we can start to brag about it.

“Up until then we just look at (the No. 1 ranking) as an honor and we’re humbled by it, but we’re just going to try to focus on playing for each other and we’ll see what happens from there.”

The surf is definitely up at No. 1 Huntington Beach.