It was a race to the region in the 34th District Baseball Tournament Thursday at Dixie Heights. The host Colonels made it in a run-ruled Game 1 that started early, and finished up early, before the storm. The nightcap, featuring Erlanger rivals St. Henry and Lloyd Memorial, didn’t make it.
Despite the heroic efforts of Dixie Heights Coach Chris Maxwell and his players, the storm – actually the lightning first, then the rain, and then the wind and rain and more lightning – was just way too much to handle, no matter how much the Colonel coaches and players, in their role as groundskeepers, tried.
Game 1: Dixie Heights 10; Villa Madonna 0
It looked a little like – actually a whole lot like — a replay of the Campbell County-Calvary Christian 37th District opener from Tuesday. Big host school with a ton of talent against a small private school without all that much.
Not that Villa Madonna didn’t have an excuse. Just look at the 22-man Viking roster. There were six eighth-graders, one of whom ended up pitching. There was one seventh-grader, three freshmen, and five sophomores. That’s 15 guys who could – maybe should – be on a JV team.
Unfortunately, they were playing a 22-8 Dixie Heights team with 10 seniors and the third-best record in the Ninth Region. Not that Villa has had a bad year. The young Vikings were 12-18 coming into this, their season finale (11-8 in the region).
And their supportive fans were right there for them. “Way to run it out,” they encouraged. “Pick it up, it’s right in front of you,” was the word on a passed ball. “Call time,” they recommended so that a loose ball back to the pitcher wouldn’t allow a run to score as was the case with the first of Dixie Heights’ 10.
That first Dixie run was a preview of how this game was not going to go a full seven. Leadoff hitter Ethan Bosley got into scoring position thanks to a pair of errors – one fielding, one throwing – then scored from third as the ball somehow got loose. One run, no hits. And then the Colonels started to hit.
But how about giving some of the credit to the Colonels’ unbelievably alliterative roster – we will — featuring a Brandon (Brooks), a Brendon (Cullen), a Brayden (Runion), a Braden (Shinkle), a Brennan (Staton), and a single-syllable starting pitcher named Brach (Rice).
They started this game a half-hour early to try to let the second game beat the storm. Five runs in the first helped. Could they get to 10 by the fifth?
But the immediate question was whether Villa Madonna could get a hit off the duo of starter Brach Rice, who went the first two innings, and Brandon Brooks, who picked up the next three. Turns out they could as sophomore shortstop Jack Adams sharply singled back up the middle in the fifth.
Maxwell wasn’t liking what he saw as his Colonels scored just one run the next three innings against the soft-throwing Vikings. “It was like pulling teeth,” he said, “you could see them swinging soft.” Or not waiting until the ball got there before unloading.
But by the fifth inning, they did wait at the plate with second and third hitters, shortstop Jay Flynn and right fielder Mark Dugan blasting doubles to the fence – Flynn’s knocking in two, Dugan’s knocking in Flynn – and all the Colonels needed was one more.
With Dugan on third, the game’s fifth and final wild pitch sent him home and Maxwell’s Colonel groundskeepers could start getting the field ready for the second game an hour early.
For those who saw Maxwell out working on the field at 7:30 a.m. and again at noon, and once again almost before the Vikings had exited their dugout, you can only do so much. Even when you’ve been at it 38 years with more than 700 wins to your name as Maxwell has.
And yeah, to a sportswriter who had just sat through his third straight run-ruled district baseball first-round game with the seeded tournaments, pitting the couple of good teams against the not-so-good, and often really young teams from small schools, Maxwell has some ideas.
“I honestly think the state needs to go to three or four levels of classification like Ohio does,” he said. And to compensate for out-of-district players, how about when a team has two, they move up one level. If they have four, they move up two.
“But a team like Villa doesn’t have a chance against a Beechwood,” Maxwell says of the two programs not all that far from each other. Just as the young Vikings didn’t have a shot against the veteran Colonels.
Game 2: St. Henry 6; Lloyd Memorial 0 (one inning; to be continued)
They did manage to get this one started plenty early as they hoped. And St. Henry took advantage with some big-time early power as the first five Crusaders up to the plate all touched it for a score. Two of those, Matthew Resing and Matthew Miller (there’s that name thing again), blasted home runs over the fence in left-center and right-center driving in all five runs before an out was recorded.
Five hits, three bases on balls and six runs off the Juggernauts’ all-freshman battery of pitcher Brayden (there’s that name again) Brown and catcher Yuri Collins Comer. And just four to go for the run-rule finish by the fifth.
But that will have to wait for another day – Friday, to be exact. Because the lightning happened first. Once it’s spotted against the darkening sky, it’s a mandatory 30-minute hold on the game with the players required to stay in the dugouts. And be reminded when they don’t.
Then came another lightning strike. And another. And another. Regularly for the next half-hour, re-starting the 30-minute clock each time. And then came the rain, along with the wind.
St. Henry was hoping that maybe they could move the game down to the artificial turf at Beechwood. “But that wouldn’t answer the lightning question,” tournament manager Maxwell said.
So they’ll resume at the top of the second “and play a doubleheader,” Maxwell said, whoever wins.