BY DAVID FOLSE II

Sports Editor

EGARD-Can success hurt a program?

Your football teams wins the state championship.

Your boys basketball team plays for the state championship.

Not getting their basketball players who also play on the diamond until the first district game of 2005, the success of the school’s athletic year actually hurt the West St. John baseball team.

The Rams for all intensive purposes were eliminated from any chance of post-season play Thursday night after falling to Fisher, 15-5.

The loss to Fisher was the second of the week for West St. John. St. Martin’s defeated the Rams by the same 15-5 score earlier in the week on Tuesday.

The pair of losses drops West St. John to 10-10 overall and more importantly 2-5 in district 10-2A play.

With only one district game remaining, there is no way for the Rams to finish at least .500 in district play.

“One of the things that really caught us this season is the fact that we had only one returning pitcher this season,” West St. John Head Coach Lenny Madere said. “We lost two of our better pitchers from last year’s squad and it hurt us.

“Another fact that went against us was that we had a lot of our players go deep into the playoffs in boy’s basketball.We didn’t get our starters back until the first game of district play this season.That sort of got us off to a slow start because we had to come together quickly. If you lose a couple of games early, you are really in a deep hole and it is hard to get out of. That is what happened to us.”

A pair of Rams did however have outstanding weeks at the plate. Darrell Barthlomew went 8-11 at the plate for the week and Darrell Butler had equally as impressive of a week, going 8-10 at the plate.