In the months leading up to this Marsh Valley baseball season, Kent Howell couldn’t shake one thought: The head coach was worried about his team’s offense. Without so many of the seniors who engineered last season’s state title run, how would the Eagles fare this spring, particularly at the plate? He figured it would really challenge his team.

“And man,” Howell said, “did that challenge continue right to the very end.”

The funny thing is that when Howell says the very end, he’s talking about the magical conclusion to this Marsh Valley season, which ended with another 3A state title. The Eagles celebrated the back-to-back championships with a school assembly last week, closing the book on what has blossomed into a special two seasons in Arimo.

“They played for each other,” Howell said. “They had the philosophy that, hey, we’re all in this together. When I’m batting, I’m batting for every one of you guys. When I’m pitching, I’m pitching for all of you guys. When a ball is hit to me, I’m fielding that for everybody. It’s not about me, it’s about all of us. And I think that made the biggest difference this year.”

For Marsh Valley, which completed the season with a shiny 24-1 record, how it all came together is quite the tale. The Eagles did struggle on offense, but they made it work by countering with elite pitching and defense. Never did that come in handy more than two weeks ago, in their three wins at the 3A state tournament.

There, top-seeded Marsh Valley opened with a 4-0 win over Gooding, a result made possible in large part by pitcher Tuff Solomon’s complete-game shutout. One day later, the Eagles’ hearts started racing for all the right reasons. Locked in a scoreless game with Homedale in the bottom of the eighth, Marsh Valley got a walkoff single from Bo Larsen. One day after that, to beat Kimberly in the title game, Eagle senior Stanton Howell — Kent’s son — laced a walkoff single into center, good for a 5-4 win and another state championship.

Here is where Kent Howell acknowledges the irony of the whole thing: Yes, the Eagles don’t win those games without their pitching, from sterling outings by Solomon to Jason Jones. But their offense, the very thing that worried him at the beginning of the season, came through at just the right time — in the biggest of spots.

“At the same time it was partially the thing that ended the last two games — was the walk-off hits,” Howell said. “But only because our pitching and defense was so good.”

Boy was it. Jones followed a spectacular junior season with a scintillating senior campaign. This spring, he posted a spotless 9-0 record, pairing it with a 0.55 ERA. He looked nearly untouchable all season, but particularly at state. In the Eagles’ semifinal win over Homedale, Jones put up this line: Complete eight innings, zero runs on five hits, eight strikeouts to three walks. “It was incredible to watch Jason Jones just get better as the game went on,” Howell said, “and pitch eight innings, with pitches left to keep going if he needed to. He was just very gritty and very focused.”

Everyone involved with the program really believed in Jones and Howell, two pitching fixtures who helped Marsh Valley win last season’s state title. What really unlocked the Eagles’ pitching this spring was Solomon, a junior who skipped about a thousand steps in his development into a force on the mound. For the season, he went 5-1 and posted a 1.77 ERA. In that win over Gooding, Solomon tossed a complete game, dancing around seven hits, fanning six and walking just one.

“He came in and pitched all year,” Howell said, “and just got better and better.”

That helped Marsh Valley produce a remarkable season — on both sides of the ball. The Eagles steamrolled through their schedule, opening with nine straight wins, their only blemish in that stretch a setback to Burley in the second game of a doubleheader. Then Marsh Valley proceeded to dispatch opponents left and right, all the way up to the state tournament in Nampa.

Back home in Arimo two weeks later, Howell realizes how extraordinary this season was. The offense once worried him. The pitching never did. What he’ll remember, though, is how players on both sides of the ball coalesced.

“One of the things I’ll miss the most is I’ll never forget this group of how well they got along,” Howell said, “and how much they truly wanted to do well for one another. They were all happy with each other’s successes. (There) was definitely no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ It was all about the team. And this group was very, very unique in that way.”