By Andy States
After surrendering a game-tying two runs to the La Plata
Warriors in the bottom of the fourth inning of Saturday night’s 3A baseball
championship game, J.M. Bennett pitcher Zak Sterling had a message for his
teammates as they made their way back to the dugout.
“After they got those two, I came into the huddle and told
the team, ‘Give me one more and we’re going to go home state champs,’” Sterling
said.
It took a few innings, but his teammates did a little bit
better, scoring three in the top of the eighth to lift the Clippers to a 5-2,
extra inning win over La Plata at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen.
“What a game. What a great game,” Bennett coach Jay
Fenoglietto said after his team won its second state championship and first
since 2006. “Both teams were very scrappy. We just came out and got a couple
timely hits and scored a couple runs. Zak hit his spots, and he’s done that all
year for us.”
Bennett (22-0) scored two runs in the top of the first, but
struggled to get anything else going as La Plata starter Chris Duelley settled
in and proceeded to face the minimum over the next six innings.
Meantime, La Plata (20-4) found enough offense to tie the
game in the fourth. Through three innings, the Warriors failed to produce a
base hit, as Sterling looked dominant and struck out seven of the first 10
batters he faced. But in the bottom of the fourth, Sterling hit Austin Barefoot
with two outs, and Lachlan Whyte followed with an RBI triple to get the Warriors
on the board. Jordan Twiford followed with a single to tie the score and
seemingly put Bennett on the ropes.
La Plata had runners on base in each of the next three
innings, and even had the potential state championship-winning run on third
base in the bottom of the seventh. But faced with that threat, Sterling came
through with a strikeout to save the game and the Clippers’ perfect season and
flip the momentum back in his team’s favor.
“They were pumped up. We couldn’t even make contact with the
ball,” La Plata coach Dan DeVitis said of the situation in the bottom of the
seventh. “You could tell they were fired up. They had the top of their order up,
so sure, they felt good about that.”
Into extra innings, Bennett didn’t waste any time getting
its offense fired back up. The first two batters reached safely, and stood at
second and third by the time Brandon Hayward stepped into the box with one out.
“I struggled previously in my at-bats, and I came up and
told my teammates I’d pick them up,” Hayward said. “I had runners in scoring
position and I knew I had to do what I had to do.”
Hayward drove an outside fastball into the gap in
right-center to score both runners and put the Clippers ahead to stay. Hunter
Greenwood’s two-out double plated Hayward with an additional insurance run to
give Bennett a 5-2 lead heading into the bottom half. Sterling then retired La
Plata in order to seal the Clippers’ perfect, state-championship season.
“That was a lot of adrenaline,” Sterling said. “My arm was
pretty shot, but you get pretty pumped up with just three outs to be state
champs.”
In eight innings of work, Sterling allowed two runs on three
hits, walked three and struck out 12.
“Very nice ballclub, outstanding pitcher, I can’t say one
thing negative about them,” DeVitis said of the Clippers. “They’re a very, very
well-coached team, a nice ballclub and we gave them a run for their money. The only
negative thing I can say is that all year long it’s been a struggle with our
bats. We’re a team that wins with pitching and defense and we’ve been winning
with it all year.
“Tonight we held them, and then they finally opened up on
us. We just didn’t match their hitting.”
Duelley was nearly Sterling’s equal on the bump. The La
Plata hurler went 7 2/3 innings, did not walk a batter and logged 11
strikeouts. But after facing the minimum 18 batters from the second through the
seventh inning, Bennett finally reached Duelley for four hits that led to the
three decisive runs in the eighth.
“We started off great, but we kind of slowed down,” Hayward
said of the game. “We just kept telling each other, ‘We got this. We came here
for a reason.’ We picked it up the last inning and did what we had to do.”
Added Sterling: “We were preaching perfection March 1. We came
to practice every day with a new mentality and stepped on the field every game
and told ourselves we were going to win that game. It worked out for us.”
J.M. Bennett 5, La Plata 2 (8 innings)
JMB 2 0 0 0 0 0
0 3 – 5 9 1
LP 0 0 0 2 0 0
0 0 – 2 3 1
WP: Sterling, LP: Duelley
2B – Greenwood (J); 3B – Whyte (L), Hayward (J)
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