Fight. Battle. Scrap.
Those are just some of the words Ryle head coach Joe Aylor uses to describe his baseball team.
They did all three on Wednesday in the 9th Region semifinals against Covington Catholic, rallying from a 4-1 deficit in the bottom of the sixth to pull out a thrilling 5-4 victory over the Colonels.
“I’ve never seen a team with this much fight,” Raiders coach Joe Aylor said. “We’ve been in these positions and we keep finding a way to win these games. You got to get 21 outs against us.”
Josh Caudill’s walk-off, bloop double to right field capped off the rally, scoring Anthony Coppola who raced home from first and beat the throw home.
“I knew I just had to put the bat on the baseball,” Caudill said. “Two outs, Anthony has to run. I knew he was scoring, he has wheels.”
In order to get to that point, some clutch two-out, two-strike hitting ensued. First it was Caleb Mann’s two-out, two-strike double to make it a 4-2 game in the bottom of the sixth, putting runners at second and third. Then Tate Cordrey followed with a two-out, two-strike double to tie the game up at four. Cordrey was the hero in their second meeting with CovCath this season, hitting a late homerun to help get the Raiders the victory.
“I just have the itch in my body that I feel like I need to do something,” Cordrey said. “Most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of. It’s baseball and we’re having fun.”
Then it was Caudill, guess what? Two outs and two strikes and he found just enough room in right field for the ball to drop and end the game.
“Bloop shot, did the job. Just had to be on defense with two strikes and not anything by me,” Caudill said.
The Raiders looked dead in the water through four. Trailing 4-0 against a Colonels team that boasted a 1.98 ERA coming into Wednesday’s contest, Bradley Zekl had them off-balance with his off-speed stuff and had allowed four hits through four.
Ryle finally got a run off the southpaw in the fifth, an AJ Curry double to right to make it 4-1.
Then Zekl was replaced for Charlie Dieruf, the senior coming on to try and get the six-out save.
“That was our plan from the get-go,” Colonels coach Bill Krumplebeck said. “Zekl usually goes about five most games. Doesn’t throw hard or anything, keeps you off-balance and pitched a hell of a game.”
Dieruf got the second out of the sixth via strikeout as the Raiders had runners on first and second after back-to-back singles from Caudill and Oli Morris. Mann battled to rope a double into right center, plating one and putting himself on second and Morris on third. Cordrey represented the go-ahead run after his double, but Dieruf got Xavier Owens to foul out to end the inning.
Facing a similar situation as they did on Monday when they let a 9-1 lead slip away to Highlands, the Colonels had a chance to answer in the top of the seventh.
Caleb Mann came on in relief and after a leadoff walk to Jackson Reardon, got a groundout and strikeout to end the threat as Reardon was in scoring position thanks to a Joseph Magary sacrifice bunt.
Coppola drew a one-out walk, Dylan McIntyre lined one to center for the second out, Caudill finding the hole in right to finish off the comeback.
“We knew some spots on the field that we could take advantage and once we saw that ball fall we wanted to force them to make a play,” Aylor said. “Anthony is one of our quickest and smarter baserunners.”
They’ll play in their first region championship since 2015, when they lost to Highlands.
For CovCath, it adds to a long line of agonizing losses in the region tournament over the past two decades. It extends their region championship drought to 19 years, the last title coming in 2005. At 31-6 and a top 10 ranking in the state, the Colonels had the mindset of coming out of the 9th and making some noise down in Lexington in the state tournament.
“Our kids couldn’t have worked any harder,” Krumplebeck said. “We were ready to go. We did everything we could do. We’re about winning championships, that’s all we talk about. The wins, number of wins really don’t matter. We were trying to go down to state and that’s what we talk about.”
They jumped out 4-0 thanks to some timely two-out hitting of their own. Alek Yuskewich got them up 1-0 in the first on a two-out, RBI single to score Charlie Dieruf, who drew a two-out walk.
They added two more in the second, Vincent DiTommaso starting a two-out rally with a triple followed by a Brian Finke RBI single. Reardon then tripled, making it 3-0 Colonels.
They added another in the fourth as Reardon reached on an error to score DiTommaso.
“Early on they were making the plays and we weren’t,” Aylor said. “We felt like once we got that run across in the fifth, it should have been a 1-1 game. We knew we were in it the entire time.”
Dylan McIntyre started to settle in from there, going six innings for the Raiders and allowed five hits, four runs, three earned to go with three walks and a strikeout. He allowed just one hit after the second inning.
Zekl allowed five hits in five innings, allowing one run with a walk and four strikeouts.
Ryle will face Dixie Heights in the championship game on Saturday at 11 a.m. The game was agreed upon before the tournament to move from Thursday to Saturday if Dixie Heights made the title game since they have graduation on Thursday.
As for Ryle, they’ll have graduation on Saturday at 3 p.m. at NKU, hoping to bring a championship trophy back with them.
RAIDERS 5, COLONELS 4
COVCATH — 120-100-0 — 4-5-2
RYLE — 000-013-1 — 5-10-2
2B — (R) Curry, Mann, Cordrey, Caudill
3B — (CC) DiTomasso, Reardon
WP — Mann. LP — Dieruf.
Records: Covington Catholic 31-6, Ryle 30-9
