Team of the Year: How Layton baseball held off challengers for Region 1 title
Layton infielder Bryce Greenhalgh throws the ball during a 6A state playoff second-round series against Davis on Thursday, May 20, 2021, at Layton High School.
Layton outfielder Cameron Hancock runs up the baseline during a 6A state playoff second-round series against Davis on Thursday, May 20, 2021, at Layton High School.
Layton's Dax Maroney dives to a base during a 6A state playoff second-round series against Davis on Thursday, May 20, 2021, at Layton High School.
LAYTON — There are four banners attached to the outfield fence at Layton High’s baseball stadium, each with its own significance for someone who’s no longer living.
The banners are No. 3, No. 26, No. 38 and the initials ‘EB.’ After a game in April, Lancers head coach Robert Ferneau pointed to all of the banners and told the story of what they meant.
The 3, which was also on Layton’s hats all season, recognizes a former Lancer player, Brock Maestas, who died last fall.
The 26 is for Bryson Moore, a former player at Layton who died two years ago after a long battle with brain cancer and who was a volunteer athletic trainer at Weber State.
The 38 is for Gary Steed, a longtime assistant coach with Ferneau at Layton and a nearly 40-year auto mechanic at Simmons Auto Repair in Layton.
The mere mention of ‘EB’ made Ferneau’s voice waver a little. The initials stand for Eileen Barnes, Ferneau’s mother-in-law, who died last year.
“Unbelievable Lancer supporter,” Ferneau said.
This was the Layton baseball team’s backdrop every day for practice and games, the backdrop for which the Lancers won the Region 1 championship in a 2021 season where they dispatched one rising challenger after another, eventually advancing to the final eight of the 6A state tournament.
“This group just carried the torch and just kept on going and believing in the process. Now they get to have the trophy in the case, so kudos to these kids for believing in the process,” Ferneau said in May.
The Lancers are the 2021 Standard-Examiner All-Area Baseball Team of the Year.
Layton, which had only two players with much varsity experience at the start of the season, found its success with pitching and defense, often leaving opponents looking for scraps at the plate.
The Lancers allowed 3.6 runs per game, had an ERA of 1.93 and a .943 team fielding percentage. A big part of that was obviously ace pitcher Cam Day, a Utah signee who’s getting major MLB Draft attention these days.
Cam Hancock, a junior, pitched 45 2/3 innings and allowed just 12 earned runs, helping a pitching group keep games low-scoring. Though Layton’s batting average as a team was .288, its on-base percentage was .412 and the team got runs across the plate just about any way it could.
“As far as grind it out, grit, play for 21 outs, this team did it,” Ferneau said.
The standout thing about the Layton team, Ferneau said, is how nobody stood out. Even Day, the MLB Draft prospect that got boatloads of scouting attention in the season, was content to be a good teammate, Ferneau said.
Preseason predictions in for the 2021 spring sports season were somewhat useless because of the 2020 season getting wiped out. Even so, the Lancers were mostly unheralded in the winter, but started the season 6-2.
“The kids bought into the whole process. It’s all about 200 feet at a time. We had a thing, plant the flag at the summit,” Ferneau said. “When they hit their doubles or hit their home runs, they always planted the flag so that was kind of the mantra and they bought in.”
Early on in Region 1, a pattern developed with Layton where it would easily win games that Day started, but would play basically a toss-up game when anyone else pitched.
In late April, the Lancers were 4-2 in the region and faced Fremont, at 5-1 and in first place after sweeping previous region unbeaten Northridge.
After an 11-inning affair, Layton won 8-7 on the road, then Day pitched the next day in an 8-1 trouncing to give the Lancers the upper hand in the region.
“You can accomplish a lot if you have the same goals. This team believed that they could win and they did a pretty good job of it,” Ferneau said.
Ferneau said the Fremont series was the turning point of the season, when he and the players realized they had something more than good on their hands.
The next series, they swept upstart region contender Weber to further put their stamp on top of the region. And in the final series of the season, Layton swept rival Northridge to both claim the title outright and keep it out of Northridge or Fremont’s trophy cabinet.
In the state playoffs, Layton beat Davis in the second round of the state tournament, then got blanked by Riverton and Bingham in the final eight. The journey was suddenly over, and it felt particularly short.
“This group, I really never got to coach them until the summer because that’s when we started,” Ferneau said.
During an interview after a game in April, Ferneau sighed, took his hat off and covered his face with it. The topic of discussion that prompted the sigh was the 2020 high school baseball season that wasn’t.
The Lancers were set to start the season with 12 seniors, a pitching rotation that was supposed to be one of the best at LHS and two mediocre seasons to fuel the competitive fire.
That team had heard about its potential, experience and everything else for more than a year, then the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated what was basically a full societal shutdown.
“It was my best team in my 26 years here, this is my 27th year,” Ferneau said.
So 2020 wasn’t the special year the Lancers, or anyone, wanted. But 2021? Ask any team in March if it would want to put a trophy in the case: the players would say yes.
