FERNDALE — The 14U Columbia Basin River Dogs begin pool play in the Babe Ruth Pacific Northwest Regional Tournament on Monday, aiming to reach bracket play for a chance to reach next month’s 14U World Series in Virginia.

“The boys are really excited to be going,” Head Coach Jaret Fulbright said. “They’re getting prepared all week and are looking forward to some good competition this coming week to hopefully book our trip to the World Series.”

Many of the players on the River Dog roster were on last year’s 13U squad that also reached regionals, but fell short of qualifying for a World Series berth. The past experience of playing in a regional tournament will help guide and motivate the River Dogs, according to Fulbright.

“They know what to expect from it,” he said. “They know where they’re playing; our format is similar to what we did last year. Same bye day, playing the same days we did last year. They know what they’re expecting going into Sunday for our check-in day to playing on Monday.”

Columbia Basin swept through last weekend’s North Washington state tournament in Moses Lake with impressive wins, defeating Moses Lake 16-1, Stilly Venom 8-6 and Brewster 20-2 before once again beating the Venom 4-1 in the state title game.

The River Dogs came out on top of a tournament in Kennewick the weekend prior, which added some extra momentum to the state tournament run.

“That (tournament win), they rolled into preparing for state and getting ready for that,” Fulbright said. “Our hitting has just come alive more recently than before, still riding on strong pitching and defense. Our pitching and defense has been strong all year, and now our hitting has come along.”

While pitching and defense have been a strong suit throughout the season for the River Dogs, the bats coming alive of late is what allowed Columbia Basin to find success in the previous weeks.

“We started putting more of an emphasis on our hitting and started getting them more at-bats, telling our kids that coming to practice alone isn’t going to help them get better at the plate – they had to start doing things on their own,” Fulbright said. “We’ve seen our kids, on our days off, going to the cages, utilizing The Six and hitting up there. I know some kids so far this week have been doing something baseball-related every day.”

With the 14U regionals being played on a turf field in Ferndale, the River Dogs hosted practice sessions at The Six in Moses Lake to get acclimated to playing on turf.

“It’s just preparing the best we can get them prepared for going into this week,” Fulbright said.

Columbia Basin’s first game of the regional tournament is at 4 p.m. on Monday against the Banks Braves. Each of the River Dogs’ four games of pool play is at 4 p.m., playing against the Vancouver Ravens on Tuesday, the Calgary Longhorns on Wednesday and Whatcom Prep 2 on Thursday. Bracket play begins on Saturday.

“As long as our pitching is on point, and our hitting continues and we play the defense we’ve continued to play, I think we’re going to have a pretty good shot at making it to Saturday for a chance to win it,” Fulbright said.

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.