BENTON CITY -- It's the annual story of May baseball.
As the days get longer and the weather warmer, the games get bigger and the pressure higher.
Though Daniel Deaton is coming to the end of his junior year, the Kiona-Benton pitcher and outfielder doesn't have to worry about how he will perform when the state tournament starts Saturday. He already has passed his big-game test, again and again, with flying colors.
It was Deaton who took the hill for a pair of district wins as a sophomore after staff ace Matt Mason was hit in the eye during warmups and sidelined for the tournament's final game.
It was Deaton again who headed the Bears early in the season against some stiff nonleague competition and with Mason out of action for six games.
"We were short on pitching early on, and he had to gut out some starts," said Ki-Be coach Clark Brown. "He did what he had to do, and he's had an outstanding year."
So much so that he finished second in voting among the SCAC East coaches for league MVP, behind Columbia-Burbank's Dylan Smith.
He hit .515 with three homers, 10 doubles and 20 RBIs, and he was 12-for-13 stealing bases while hitting in the cleanup spot. Deaton played right field and DH when he didn't pitch.
When he was on the mound, he finished 9-3 with a 4.77 ERA, striking out 71 in 63 innings. His three losses all came early, against 2A Othello and SCAC West powers Naches Valley and Goldendale.
But perhaps no stat bolsters Deaton's importance to the Bears than this: He factored into more than half of the decisions for Ki-Be (16-6).
But to Deaton, the one stat that stands out is his team's 10-0 march through league, and how they have tackled each goal and moved on to the next.
"Our first goal was to win league, after that district," he said. "We've done those two goals, so after that it's the final four."
The Bears are just two wins away from advancing to the state semifinals for the first time since 1997, the last of a six-year run of state appearances that included a title in 1996 and runner-up finishes in 1994 and '95.
Ki-Be plays Tenino at 1 p.m. Saturday at Larson Field in Moses Lake and would face the winner between Zillah and Colville at 4 p.m.
Columbia-Burbank, meanwhile, plays Freeman at 10 a.m. at Dan White Field in East Wenatchee, with hopes of playing Bellevue Christian or Cashmere in the quarterfinals at 4 p.m.
Despite the Bears turning over much of their team -- including the entire infield -- Deaton said he was confident they had a big season in them.
"I'm used to play with a lot of these guys," said Deaton, one of the few sophomores to make varsity last season. "We have a lot of juniors on the team, and they're pretty good."
Their coach can only hope this group of first-year varsity players handles the postseason pressure as well as Deaton did last season.
He homered and threw four innings in a 16-2 win over Zillah in a loser-out game. Three days later, he threw all eight innings and scored the winning run in a 4-3 win over Burbank in the winner-to-state, loser-out game.
"I was kind of nervous," Deaton admitted, "but I was pretty confident because we had beaten Burbank once before."
He has the confidence of his coach.
"He's provided a lot of leadership," Brown said. "But he always has. He proved he was a leader as a sophomore."
