The last two seasons, state tournament aspirations soared high for the Eastside Catholic baseball team. The Crusaders combined for a 39-9 record over the span.

The only problem — each of those seasons came to abrupt ends with losses in the Metro tournament.

“We’ve gotten over that, and talked to them about that,” first-year Crusader head coach Kurt Boyd said. “Part of the function of tripping up late in the year … you’ve got to be able to do the little things in baseball. We are working on little things day in and day out.”

Boyd, who was an assistant pitching coach for Curt Towey at Eastside Catholic last year, has the helm in 2010. He has years of experience coaching club and high school baseball. Boyd also has nine assistants under him. In all, the group has coached for more than 175 years. That doesn’t count the presence of former Seattle Mariner Jay Buhner, who volunteers his time throwing batting practice among other chores.

But success will go beyond coaches this season.

The Crusaders return a solid core that includes five senior pitchers.

Senior Sam Lindquist leads that group. The 6-foot-6 right-hander has already signed a letter of intent to play his college ball at Stanford.

Eastside also returns Andrew Villeneuve, Ryan Gillespie, Bobby Schultz and Steven Leighton to the mound.

Defensively, the Crusaders are young, but talented.

Junior catcher Jake Gober, junior first baseman Justin David, junior second baseman Jacob Kelliher, junior shortstop Jeff Boling and junior third baseman Brandon Wong make up the infield.

Senior outfielder Garrett Degallier, who has committed to Gonzaga University, anchors the outfield.

Others expected to make impacts as utility players include junior Rob Granfelt, junior Matt Wenzinger, sophomore Brandon Walgamott, freshman Blake Gillespie and freshman Alex Foley.

“We are going to play defense like you’ve never seen before,” Boyd said. “Pitching and defense is my philosophy, it wins championships.”

Boyd also expects his team to be successful on offense — the focus will just be a little different from recent years.

“We’re not going to be the offensive team that broke the unofficial high school home run record a couple of years ago when we had 68,” he said. “We’re going to be more of a pressure offense. We’ve got really good overall team speed.”

Boyd acknowledges the Metro League might be one of the toughest top to bottom with the likes of Blanchet, Lakeside, O’Dea and Seattle Prep. But that doesn’t change his team’s ideas of where they should be come the end of May.

“Our goal, like anybody else, is to win the state championship,” Boyd said. “I won’t use anything that’s happened in the past as an excuse.”