Silver State rivalry heats up

By Rob Miech

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

They’re holding the trophy high, smiles all around, after winning the conference baseball tournament last season at the College of Southern Nevada.

In only their second season, the Western Nevada Wildcats had made a statement.

They went on to win a district playoff round and played in the NJCAA World Series. But you won’t find a photograph from either of those series highlights on Western Nevada’s Web site.

The enduring snapshot is of the jubilant Wildcats and their fans frolicking on the diamond at Morse Stadium in Henderson.

“They want people from Las Vegas to see that,” Southern Nevada coach Tim Chambers said. “Certainly, them beating us is bigger than them beating anyone else.”

The Wildcats returned to Morse a month ago and won three of four games against the Coyotes; it was the first time Southern Nevada had dropped a home series to a Scenic West Athletic Conference foe in its nine seasons.

That was a bold statement.

As the Coyotes prepare for a series this weekend at Western Nevada College in Carson City, the Silver State junior college baseball rivalry isn’t simply simmering. It’s beginning to boil.

“It’s on its way to being fiery,” Chambers said.

“It’s been a good one,” Wildcats coach D.J. Whittemore said. “They’re the top dogs, and you want to knock them off. We hold their program in the highest regard.”

When Whittemore started the Western Nevada program, he rang Chambers for insight and advice. The most helpful: Give every position player a start during twin-doubleheader SWAC weekends, to develop chemistry and depth.

“But I asked a lot of questions,” said Whittemore, a former lawyer and the son of lobbyist and developer Harvey Whittemore.

These days, Chambers is more guarded with his opinions and his invitations. For the first time, he didn’t ask Western Nevada to participate in a preseason tournament at Southern Nevada this season.

Whittemore, who has had more than a dozen Las Vegas-area players on his roster annually, still brought his club to Southern Nevada to play its first two series of the season on high school fields at Sierra Vista and Centennial.

“The rivalry comes more from Vegas than anything,” Chambers said. “They have a lot of Vegas guys. We have a lot of Vegas guys. It’s, ‘We’ll show them.’ ”

Western Nevada started it with a bang, winning 6-3 at Southern Nevada in January 2006. Chambers said the Wildcats’ energy level was way beyond the Coyotes’ that night.

Overall, Western Nevada is 13-6 against College of Southern Nevada. On the field, however, that could be viewed as a 10-9 edge because the Coyotes forfeited three victories for using two ineligible players in 2006.

As usual, it depends on whose Web site you check out. Southern Nevada still lists those forfeitures as victories, however unofficial.

Chambers checks out everything. He noted that, after taking that series in Henderson a month ago when Southern Nevada was the top-ranked team in the land, Western Nevada went 1-3 in its next two series.

Whittemore agreed with Chambers about that Las Vegas angle, but he also said that you want to play your best when you play the best. Chambers said he has never lost a prospect to Western Nevada, that nobody he has offered a scholarship to has instead gone to Carson City.

“They have a lot of guys I didn’t recruit,” Chambers said. “I can’t recruit 50 guys a year. So I think the guys on their club play to prove me wrong. It’s up to our guys to prove me right the next time around or down the stretch.”

Whittemore also said he has little control over his team’s main Web page. The school photographer at the playoffs last season at Southern Nevada did not travel to the next round in Nebraska or to the World Series in Colorado.

So the photograph of the Wildcats’ wild celebration on the Coyotes’ turf was the only official postseason documentation Western Nevada possessed.

“I don’t take pictures and I don’t deal with pictures,” Whittemore said. “But I feel bad, in retrospect, with the amount of time we spent on their field after that game. It wasn’t done to show anybody up. We just didn’t know any better. We’d never accomplished anything like that.”

Chambers doesn’t want to disrespect Whittemore or his program. He said that several times. But he has strong feelings about his own program.

“We’re a better club than them,” Chambers said. “So be it. If we don’t end up finishing above them in the league, then I did a terrible job coaching this team.”

The flame of a Silver State rivalry just turned into a torch.