The Grant Union/Prairie City/Monument baseball team traveled to Arizona last month to test itself against some unfamiliar competition — and made lifelong memories in the process.

The Prospectors took part in the Coach Bob National Invitational, which featured 95 teams from Arizona, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Illinois, Idaho, Missouri and Florida. The team played four games in a three-day span, March 25-27, in the Phoenix metro area.

Whispers of a trip to Arizona started two years ago, during head coach RC Huerta’s first year at the helm. The idea started to manifest into reality last year following a fundraiser in which the team played 100 innings of baseball and earned enough to pay for the excursion.

Next came actually getting into the invitation-only tourney, which Huerta took care of.

“I was blessed to have some people who I knew that were able to get me in touch with the right people, so I was able to make that happen,” he said.

Rather than fly, the team took a pair of minibuses to get to and from the Coach Bob National Invitational, a 17-hour drive each way.

Along the way, the Pros made all the obvious stops a high school baseball team would make on a jaunt from Oregon to Arizona, including Las Vegas (where they took a group photo in front of the Las Vegas sign) and a quick side trip to the infamous Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada.

“They went with my wife to the Clown Motel, which was a haunted motel,” Huerta said. “So that was a really cool experience for them, and then a lot of them freaked out — they’re all freaked-out kids, which is pretty funny.”

Once at their temporary home in Mesa, Arizona, the team found themselves staying in digs that would be just fine with many a high school athlete.

“We had an arcade in our house,” catcher/pitcher Talon Van Cleave said. Appropriately, the house also had a Wiffle ball field in the back yard.

“We played a lot of Wiffle ball,” said outfielder Eric Culley.

The Prospectors even managed to catch an Arizona Diamondbacks game on opening day, test their driving skills at Top Golf and head to the Main Event for a night of bowling, laser tag, games and food.

There was also a baseball tournament to be played, and the team performed admirably despite going 1-3 on the trip.

One of the Pros’ losses, against Shadow Mountain out of Arizona, came on the final play of the game, while another was to Umpqua Valley Christian, the third-ranked team in Oregon class 2A baseball. The Pros lost by just a single run in both of those contests.

A 14-5 loss to Arizona’s Apollo High School saw the Pros go down 9-0 through the first two innings and never recover. The team’s lone win at the Coach Bob National Invitational was a 6-3 win over Yamhill-Carlton out of Oregon’s 3A ranks.

Many on the team played their first true night game under bright lights in Arizona and played at high schools Van Cleave said resembled college campuses.

There were some other differences for the Pros, most notably the use of a pitch clock, which leads to a much faster game.

All in all, the experience created memories that players said will last a lifetime.

“It was a great time,” Van Cleave said. “I’ll probably never get to go to Arizona like that again and play those baseball games — it was a memory, and a great memory, I feel like.”

Senior Sheldon Lenz thanked the school district for allowing the team to go to Arizona and said he hopes more high school ballplayers get to experience the tournament.

“Get the high schoolers down there and play some baseball,” he said. “It’s an amazing atmosphere down there.”

If Huerta has his way, Lenz’s hope may come true. His plan is to take the team to the Coach Bob National Invitational every two years.

“Maybe they might raise enough money to fly,” Van Cleave said.