Seniors Canaan Klaassen and Jacob Wadle listen to family and coaches talk about their baseball careers at Grace Community School prior to signing their letters of intent to play baseball at LeTourneau and East Texas Baptist, respectively. (Shannon Wilson | Tyler Morning Telegraph)

If Grace Community is playing a big game, it’s not hard to guess who’s going to be on the mound.

Canaan Klaassen takes the ball at the start, with Jacob Wadle ready to come on in relief to close it out.

The duo has helped the Cougars reach the TAPPS 4A regional playoffs and while they hope their high school career keeps going for another week or two, Klaassen and Wadle ensured they’ll continue playing in college after signing to play in the American Southwest Conference.

Klaassen will pitch at LeTourneau while Wadle will take his left arm to East Texas Baptist, confirmed at a signing ceremony at the Grace library on Wednesday.

“I couldn’t be more proud of those two guys,” Cougars coach Kendall Fox said. “It’s been an honor to coach two Godly young men who love the Lord, love their teammates and know how to work hard and know how to do it the right way.”

Klaassen is the team leader in innings pitched (54), wins (7-2) and strikeouts (66). He has 17 strikeouts in his last 10 1-3 innings.

“As a teammate he’s our quiet leader who does the right things when no one’s watching, picks up his teammates when they’re down, when they’re doing well encouraging them,” Fox said.

The right-hander chose LeTourneau for his degree.

“I will be majoring in aeronautical science and professional flight, which isn’t a very common degree and LeTourneau ends up being one the No. 1 universities for that aviation degree in the nation,” Klaassen said.

Wadle similarly is headed to ETBU with academics in mind, saying ETBU’s athletic training program caught his eye before the baseball program. The smaller university size also drew Wadle to the Marshall school.

“I like the atmosphere and the aspect everyone knows each other, kind of like a family,” Wadle said.

Wadle averages better than a strikeout per inning with a team-leading 1.31 ERA and is someone Fox can rely on out of the bullpen.

“Great to have a kid in there that not only can hit real well but come out of the pen and shut things down for us,” Fox said. “You can count on him day in and day out to work hard and just provide the boost that we need.”

Though Grace hasn’t seen this kind of success since they’ve been in high school, Wadle and Klaassen aren’t unfamiliar with baseball triumph. They, along with fellow Grace senior Jacob Spitzer, were on the Rose Capital East All-Stars team in 2011 that nearly won the Senior League World Series in Bangor, Maine.

“It was unreal,” Wadle said. “Playing Hawaii and playing Aruba and teams like that, it was so different. It felt like you were in the major leagues playing, being on TV the last game. It was a ton of fun.”

Klaassen described finishing second in the nation as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“All the guys we were with, we were all brothers,” he said. “That’s something that I’ll never be able to truly experience again in that same setting so it was awesome.”

That experience has helped lead Grace to within a win of reaching state for the first time since 2003. The Cougars play Midland Christian at 6 p.m. Monday at Weatherford College in a one-game playoff.

“I think we’ve as a team come together bonding wise, really come together,” Klaassen said Kind of our motto the last couple weeks is family. That’s who we are. We’re a family. We’ve got each other’s backs we’re brothers in arms. That’s definitely helped us a lot.”