Their senior season is scrapped, but Gig Harbor’s Wild, Skansi look forward to college baseball future

In a world of social distancing and the all-too-familiar self-quarantine, Owen Wild and Zane Skansi are staying baseball-ready.

You may find Skansi lifting in his garage, out running with his dog, or wherever the Gig Harbor senior can get swings in.

“There’s cages up at the high school that I’ve been trying to sneak into and take some swings,” Skansi said. “I’ve been trying to get swings anywhere I can.”

Wild, a Gonzaga pitching commit, took to his future coach for workout advice.

The reigning South Sound Conference MVP told his coaches that his classes were canceled, and wanted to spend his workout time replicating that of the current collegiate athletes.

Wild received what he asked for — a routine from Gonzaga, and structure in his workouts that take place in the garage.

“Now, all of my workouts have more structure to them,” Wild said. “I’m just trying to stay in shape and get a routine together every day. Run, lift, throw, all of that. Just anything to stay ready.”

With schools shut down for the remainder of the school year amid Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-home order in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, Wild and Skansi won’t get to suit up for the Tides for the senior seasons, but they have future baseball to look forward to. Skansi committed to Utah last October, and Wild chose to stay within Washington state at Gonzaga, a school he says produced notable pitching talent over recent years.

Yet Wild’s baseball career will continue before attending Gonzaga.

Wild plans to play for the Yakima Valley Pippins of the West Coast League, which is scheduled to start in June and as of now, has no delay from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Tides not only won the SSC last season, but competed in the state tournament and placed third.

There was chemistry among the boys. It made the team better. When the Tides built momentum throughout the district and state tournaments, they took the field and felt like they were going to win.

“Every game we played, we felt like we were going to win,” Wild said. “And we’d come out and just dominate.”

Last year’s path to success was clear and calculated. Paired with offensive consistency were two starting pitchers -- Owen Wild and Luke Finnigan -- to eat innings. Erik Underwood would come in to close, and the cycle would repeat in a mostly biweekly game schedule.

Wild and Skansi were just two Tides seniors hoping to follow up on wildly successful junior campaigns. Wild was named the league’s most valuable player after striking out a school-record 112 batters last season (while hitting .354 and driving in 17 runs). Skansi, the middle-infielder and Utah commit, drove in 26 runs and hit two home runs, while compiling a .373 batting average.

The pair of Tides have already committed to their schools, though. Current high school juniors don’t have that luxury, and in what is typically the heart of the season, ballplayers have no platform to showcase their skills and catch the eye of recruiters.

“I can’t even imagine trying to get recruited at this point in the year,” Wild said. “I think it’s a dead period.”

So when Wild and Skansi talked about their respective commitments, they discussed a family-like atmosphere at the universities — opportunities that they couldn’t let slip away.

“The culture that they have, plus the facilities that they’re building. … Once a Zag, always a Zag. Looking forward in the future, every Division-I player is looking to get drafted. And Gonzaga’s pitching staff, the last couple years since they got their pitching coach, they’ve been really good.”

Skansi had a tough decision between Utah and Northern Colorado, but chose the Utes for more than the Pacific-12 platform.

“At Utah, I felt like I was in (better hands),” Skansi said. “I felt more comfortable there. I felt like I could see myself going to school there, too. The opportunity was better for me.”

Could a state title have been in the cards for the Tides? Now, we’ll never know. But Gig Harbor was never short on confidence.

“Everybody says ‘this is our year,’” Wild said. “But at Gig Harbor, we think every year is our year.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 11:27 AM.