A lot has changed for Van-Far baseball this year.

Van-Far District Title Game Photo Gallery

The Indians started with new coaches and a mostly new roster, and on Wednesday, they added a new district championship. Van-Far won the program’s first district title since 2018 after a 12-6 victory over Sturgeon in the Class 2 District 5 championship game in Mexico hosted by Silex, stealing 17 bases and overcoming a 2-0 deficit after two innings.

Head coach Cameron Huff joined the program this season, increasing the Indians’ numbers from nine players to about 20. Huff said only four returned from Van-Far’s team a year ago, which won one game to add to the program’s total of four in the previous four years. Regardless, a district championship was a goal for this season.

“This team’s completely different,” Huff said. “These guys worked and wanted it, especially senior Gage Gibson and junior Reece Culwell. They’ve been through the thick of it at Van-Far. Since last Thursday when districts started, we’ve been practicing at 6 a.m., before games, and on Saturday morning, I think it was 6 again. On Sunday on Mother’s Day, we came in at 6 a.m. again.”

Gibson has played baseball all four years at Van-Far (9-13) and was determined to show that this season would be different from his other teams. 

“The last three years, I’ve had three wins in three years,” Gibson said. “I think people doubted us again this year, and we came in and put in the work every day. This was our goal, and now, we’re just going to keep playing and be ourselves.”

Culwell has pitched for Van-Far the past two years while increasing his personal accolades like winning all-conference in the past and eclipsing 100 career strikeouts earlier this season. He is glad that the program has a notable accolade like a district championship.

“It definitely means a lot,” Culwell said. “People were definitely counting us out and weren’t expecting this from us this year. To be honest at the beginning of the season, I didn’t expect it from us. We came together and played team baseball and really got the job done.”

Gibson and Culwell each had big roles in Van-Far’s victory. When Van-Far was trailing Sturgeon (9-11) 2-0 early in the game via runs on a dropped third strike and a balk, the Indians used small ball and baserunning to inject some energy into the offense. 

Gibson slid head-first on a RBI groundout from Tyson Douglas for Van-Far’s first run and bunted home the tying run with two strikes and two outs. 

“You’ve just got to trust your instincts, trust yourself and trust your other guys,” Gibson said. “We had a steal on during that bunt so let’s just play ball and put the ball in play.”

“He comes into hitting practice to bunt,” Huff said. “The grit and grind from Gage Gibson is insane, and I couldn’t be more proud to have him as a captain on this team.”

Huff said Gibson hadn’t hit in the No. 2 spot before districts as a sure way to score leadoff hitter Malik Douglas, who was 3-for-5 with three RBI, or anybody else who reaches base before Gibson. The senior bunted again later to help score more runs, showing the faith Huff said he had in him.

Culwell struck out seven batters and allowed five earned runs on eight hits and two walks in six innings. Gibson Condie was able to cover the final inning, but Huff is happy how Culwell improved during the game.

“We had a talk, and I told him that this is his game to win,” Huff said. “I think he took that to heart as I think the nerves were in the first couple innings. He’s a heck of a pitcher.”

“The first couple innings, the nerves were getting to me,” Culwell said. “I just settled in and realized this is just another baseball game. I’ve just got to pitch like I know how to pitch.”

While the strikeouts have been a weakness, Huff said Van-Far has a great strength in its baserunning. In several games this season, the Indians have finished with at least 10 stolen bases and had that in every district game. Slade Keller led with three stolen bases and had two each from Culwell, Carson Huff, Gibson, Bransen Salmon and Ronnie Stanich. 

“We strike out a lot,” Huff said. “As a team, we have about 130 strikeouts coming into this game. Going into districts, we talked and said, ‘We’re going to change some stuff up.’ I said from the beginning that we were going to create chaos on the basepaths, and that’s what we were doing.”

Sturgeon just couldn’t settle down on the mound, uncorking many wild pitches that helped advance runners and allowed the Indians to slide ahead of tags at home plate. 

“Creating chaos creates stress,” Huff said. “That’s what led to some passed balls by Sturgeon. We were just aggressive on the basepaths, pitchers were constantly thinking about that, and the next thing you know, they make an error off of a bunt or this, that or the other.”

Van-Far was able to have more fun as the game went along. The excitement in the dugout rose after Huff’s younger brother, Carson, hit a two-RBI single to give Van-Far’s first lead in the fourth inning. 

Carson Huff said he hadn’t played baseball since third or fourth grade, yet the junior earned first-team all-conference honors this season in the Eastern Missouri Conference for a .458 batting average and 18 RBI, which is second only to the Douglas brothers — Malik with a .509 average and Tyson with 19 RBI. Safe to say that Huff is glad to have joined the team, and that the Indians want to continue having fun.

“I didn’t have any expectations coming into here,” Huff said. “I was just playing to have fun and was doing it for my brother since he really wanted me to play. I listened, and it paid off.”

Van-Far plays District 6 champion Schuyler County (18-6) on Monday, and Cameron Huff wants this year to last as long as possible as the program tries to take more steps.

“I don’t even want to think about next year at this point,” Huff said. “I just want to keep rolling on the highs of this year.”