SOUTH ROYALTON — Much was expected of the White River Valley baseball program before the Wildcats ever played a game.
The school was formed in 2018 out of the merger of South Royalton and Whitcomb-Rochester, the former of which had won VPA Division IV state championships in 2016 and 2017 and lost in the final in ’18. South Royalton head coach Devin Cilley stayed on to lead White River Valley, which had an incredible 17 returning players for its first season in 2019.
It’s safe to say WRV has surpassed those high expectations — now one game into their its season since the merger, the Wildcats haven’t lost once. That’s 36 wins in a row, including a Division III state title in 2019 and a Division IV championship last year, sandwiched around the 2020 season canceled due to COVID-19, which Cilley thinks would have been by far his best team.
“When we combined, it was really out of necessity for everybody,” Cilley said. “It worked out. The South Royalton kids kind of showed the (Whitcomb-Rochester) kids what we’d been doing, and we built off of that.”
The current WRV squad has four players who were eighth graders on the last team at South Royalton, which fell to Danville in the championship game.
They now make up the team’s senior core as the Wildcats try to make it three perfect seasons in a row.
Dominic Craven is WRV’s ace pitcher and may be the Wildcats’ best hitter as well. In the season opener — a 13-0 win over Rivendell on Tuesday that was shortened to five innings due to the mercy rule — Craven threw three no-hit innings, striking out six and also doubled and tripled at the plate, scoring three runs.
“There’s definitely a big target on our back this year,” Craven said. “We’re going to have to work even harder than we have the last couple of years. When you score a couple runs in the first inning, it takes the weight off your shoulders, but there’s games where you don’t come out hot like that, and it’s going to be a dogfight.”
Craven’s stepbrother, Austin Tracy, is also a key senior, batting in the leadoff spot and playing shortstop. Catcher Arliss Spaulding, who had three hits Tuesday, and first baseman Weston Trombly were both on the 2018 Royals as well.
If those names sound familiar to Upper Valley sports fans, it’s likely because they were the core of the WRV boys basketball team that reached this year’s VPA Division IV final before losing on a buzzer-beater to Blue Mountain. But that chemistry has made the transition from the hardwood to the diamond as smooth as can be.
“Those four, they’ve played together since they were in third grade,” Cilley said. “They give each other crap and they pick on each other, but they know when it’s time to play, they buckle down and they play well. Nobody’s really head and shoulders above everybody else, and nobody has that attitude, either.”
Another senior, outfielder Jamesen Roussel, played at the varsity level for Whitcomb-Rochester in eighth grade, and the Wildcats also added a senior transfer from Hartford in Macin Gaudette, who played a role in WRV’s basketball success as well.
But even if WRV’s streak does end this season or it falls short of a three-peat, the foundation for the future is already in place. Craven’s younger brother, Donovan, made the team as a freshman and pitched a scoreless inning against the Raptors. Spaulding’s cousin, freshman Braeden Russ, started in center field on Tuesday and collected his first varsity hit.
For now, though, the Wildcats are focused less on maintaining the streak and more on adding a third green banner to the right-field fence at their home field, to live alongside the blue banners from the South Royalton days.
“We know going into every game that it could be the last one,” Cilley said. “I haven’t seen it affect them yet. They don’t seem to get rattled. I probably think about it more than they do.
“When it ends, it will end, and we’ll have a final number and we’ll always be able to talk about that.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.