Humbled Hornets: One bad inning costs Hillsdale in heartbreaker

[caption id="attachment_729" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Senior Tyler Vandeberghe and head coach Chris Adams share a moment following Hillsdale's season-ending loss.It is doubtful Chris Adams knew just how fortuitous his words from earlier this week would be in the regional semifinals at Clinton Saturday."][/caption]

It is doubtful Chris Adams knew just how fortuitous his words from earlier this week would be in the regional semifinals at Clinton Saturday.

“I think the team that’s going to come out of our region is the team with the best pitching and the team that makes the fewest mistakes — maybe not the fewest errors, but the fewest mistakes,” the Hillsdale baseball coach said in an interview on Thursday.

For six innings Saturday, Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard made a few more mistakes and Hillsdale had a decided advantage in the pitching department.

The Hornets (23-10) built a 4-2 lead and needed just three more outs to advance to the regional finals to help alleviate some of the pain from a 2008 regional semifinals loss.

But two errors, a hit batter and three straight run-scoring hits for the Fighting Irish brought Gabriel Richard fans to their feet and sent the Hornets into an emotional tail-spin at the most inopportune time, ultimately sending them home on the wrong side of a 7-4 final score.

[caption id="attachment_730" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Senior Mitchell Gabriele and head coach Chris Adams mull Saturday's loss in the dugout following the game."][/caption]

“It’s quite possible that we were the better team, and we told the kids that today just wasn’t our day. Unfortunately our mistakes came late and were tougher to overcome,” Adams said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow. The (seniors) are never going to play high school baseball again. I get to come back and coach next year — they don’t, they don’t get a second chance.”

After Hillsdale scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth to break a 2-all tie, on bases-loaded walks to Brad Jenkins and Scott Lantis, Dillon Dirth returned to the mound one final time after allowing just four hits and two runs in the first six innings.

But right away, the Fighting Irish’s nine-hitter Justin Goike got on base thanks to an infield error, Dirth hit Dennis Ostrowski and a wild pitch advanced the runners to second and third.

Nonetheless, Adams stuck by his senior ace, who was 9-0 coming into the game.

“He got out of three (similar situations) in this game. Sometimes something bad has to happen for him to really knuckle down and start pitching,” Adams said. “He did a great  job and I really can’t say enough about all of those seniors.”

This time Dirth was not so fortunate.

Nolan Breymaier knocked an RBI single and Conor Dishman drove a pitch to deep right field, where the Hornet fielder lost the ball in the sun and Dishman made it all the way to third base while two runners came home.

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Too tough to swallow: Comets' 3-run lead evaporates in final inning

[caption id="attachment_725" align="alignleft" width="450" caption="The Comets needed a few more insurance runs heading into the final inning Saturday."][/caption]

Just when the Jonesville softball team’s magic carpet ride was about to fly to new heights, the rug was pulled out from underneath them and a tough life lesson was served up.

The Comets blew a 3-0 seventh-inning lead and were just one out away from advancing to the regional finals, before Manchester stormed back and shocked Jonesville fans, players and coaches by scoring the game-winning run on an errant throw to first base.

After getting just one hit in the first six innings off Comet ace, senior Kelsey Aemisegger, the Flying Dutchmen came alive in a matter of minutes to put an end to a phenomenal few weeks that saw Jonesville go from an 11-18 team to a near-regional finals squad.

“I told them that unfortunately the lesson we learned was that you have to stay focused for seven full innings, that’s why we play seven innings,” Jonesville head coach Richard Alvarez said. “We lost our focus that last inning and they didn’t. They kept playing for seven innings and we didn’t.”

Alvarez said his girls were high on adrenaline heading to the final inning, but he was still cautiously nervous.

“I believe when you get a team that is that good you can’t let them stick around, you can’t let them think they have a chance,” he said. “I didn’t think three runs was enough and I was trying to motivate my girls to score more runs…but we let them believe they had a chance and they kept fighting and it worked for them.”

Manchester's comeback started with run-scoring doubles by Roxanne Rickert and Jordan Ridenour, but an Aemisegger strikeout left the Flying Dutchmen with two outs and fleeting hope.

That’s when Nicole Jackson hit a run-scoring single, and she scored the game-winning run not a minute later when the next batter hit a ground ball that was fielded well, but thrown past the first baseman.

An immediate silence engulfed the home team’s stands and Alvarez tried to find some purpose in the difficult defeat.

“We talked about using this as a building block. I (said) earlier that all year long we’ve been using these losses as building blocks for what’s coming down the road,” he said. “I talked in the dugout about those players returning — lets use this to take the next step. I’ve always believed that when you get in tournament play and playoffs it’s always a progression — you have to learn to win, then you have to learn to get in the playoffs, then you have to learn to play in the playoffs.”

Jonesville could not have asked for a better start to Saturday’s contest, as Brooke Nichols tripled, before scoring on a Kelly White single in the bottom of the first. The following inning, Jenna Kast got on base thanks to a dropped third strike and errant throw by the catcher, and she eventually scored on a wild pitch.

The Comets added an insurance run in the sixth when Megan Rowe singled, stole a pair of bases and scored on an error, but ultimately it wasn’t enough.

Aemisegger was still stellar in defeat, allowing just four hits and confusing Manchester players by effectively throwing pitches with three distinctively different speeds.

Alvarez called her his “horse down the stretch” and he said she would be difficult to replace next season.

“She’s a very dominant pitcher on the mound and she’s a very good team leader, so yeah it’s going to be tough to replace all four of my seniors. They know I look to them for that leadership, but we’ve got the program going where I’d like it to be and we’ve got younger players coming up and we want to reload, not rebuild.”

Clinton went on to win the regional title, with a 13-0 win over Manchester.

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Errors doom Camden-Frontier softball team as season comes to an end

By Bill Mullaly / Special to the Hillsdale Daily News

Camden-Frontier hung tough with Ottawa Lake-Whiteford for two innings but things changed in the third and the Bobcats went on to a 10-1 win in the Division 4 regional semifinals on Saturday.

Three runs in the third inning and four more in the fourth sent the Bobcats to the final game where they beat Petersburg-Summerfield 6-3.

Summerfield had beaten Homer 4-0 in the other semifinal.

The Redskins had just one hit in the first three innings as catcher Kara Bryner singled in the third inning.

And the Bobcats used three hits off of Redskins pitcher Morgan Warfield to take a 3-0 in the bottom of the third inning.

Megan Schwartzengraber came in for the final three innings, but things didn’t improve.

Two walks and two more Bobcat hits in the fourth plated four more runs and the game was all but over against a very good Bobcat pitcher. Only a solo home run by Erika Poikey in the fifth kept the Redskins from being shut out.

The only other Redskin hit in the game was a sixth inning single by Kim Bennett.

The Bobcats added a single run in the fifth and two more runs in the sixth to put the game away. The Redskins suffered 10 strikeouts and went down in order in the second, fourth and seventh innings.

Warfield gave up four hits, didn’t walk a batter and did record three strikeouts in taking the loss in the circle. Schwartzengraber allowed six hits, struck out four and walked two.

“We only allowed one earn run the entire game but we didn’t make the plays on defense,” said Redskin head coach Melissa Warfield. “We need to hit the ball well to be successful and Whiteford made the plays on our hits and we didn’t make the plays on their hits."

Camden-Frontier finishes at 22-7 after going 22-9 the year before with both seasons ending in the regional semifinal game.

“The story of this season was pretty much the same thing that being if we didn’t score enough runs and made  one or two errors then things would go downhill. We had a real good year overall but I was hoping we would play better in the regional game,” said Warfield, who returns her two top pitchers who are both sophomores.

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Hornets go all in: Hillsdale will be tested in loaded regional Saturday

[caption id="attachment_709" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Hillsdale junior Darren Wiseley walks to the plate for an at-bat in a league contest earlier this season. Saturday, Wiseley and his teammates will take on Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard in the regional semifinals."][/caption]

If they’re going to end up in the state quarterfinals a week from this afternoon, the Hillsdale High School baseball team will have to plow through some first-rate competition this weekend.

The three teams in their regional have a combined total of 21 losses.

One of the schools, Lumen Christi, has knocked the Hornets football team out of the state playoffs two of the past four years and rallied from four runs down to beat Hillsdale on the diamond earlier this season.

And the host school Clinton, is 32-5, ranked No. 7 in Division 3 and has lost just once in the last four weeks.

Difficult?

Yes.

But impossible?

Certainly not if you ask head coach Chris Adams.

“Rankings don’t mean anything this time of season. You know, you get to regionals, and once in a while a team will get lucky and win a district, but for the most part you’re dealing with, and I’m not just talking record wise...all good teams,” Adams said. “I think the team that’s going to come out of our region is the team with the best pitching and the team that makes the fewest mistakes — maybe not the fewest errors, but the fewest mistakes.”

At least Hillsdale can wait until the finals to face either the Redskins or Titans, but Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard (30-7) will be no breeze in the semis, fresh off their winningest regular season ever and a thrilling district championship win last weekend.

They toppled Manchester 6-5 with a seventh-inning RBI double at Grass Lake to earn a spot in the regional field, after beating Grass Lake 9-0 behind a 10 strikeout no-hitter from Chris Ostrowski in the semis.

Ostrowski is an all-league sophomore who has thrown several no-hitters this year and struck out 10 or more a handful of times.

“He’s a bigger kid and he throws the ball OK velocity wise,” Adams said. “Grass Lake is down this year, so we didn’t get a real good read on what he did. I think he just pretty much stuck with the fastball and was able to dominate.”

On top of that, coach Greg Lenhoff isn’t afraid to use as many pitchers as he needs to win a contest, evident by him using five in Tuesday’s 2-1 win over Notre Dame Prep.

The Fighting Irish have been pretty good at limiting the opposition this season, holding opponents to one or no runs 11 times in 2009.

And at the plate they’re similar to some teams Hillsdale has faced, according to Adams.

“They match-up with us pretty well and they’re kind of like Jonesville in that they’re free swingers who like to swing the bats. We just want to take the same approach we did last weekend pretty much,” Adams said.

Hillsdale will start Dillon Dirth opposite Ostrowski, not surprising considering he is 9-0 with a 1.37 ERA and was the No. 1 pitcher at districts.

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Comets' magical run takes its show to regionals

[caption id="attachment_706" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Jonesville Comets will need to get girls on base any way possible this weekend."][/caption]

In its first regionals appearance in school history, Richard Alvarez expects his Jonesville softball team to do more than just show up and enjoy the scenery.

Despite owning just a 14-18 record heading into a Clinton regional full of squads with 23 or more wins, Alvarez believes a precedent for surprising postseason success has been set in the area, and he’d like to continue the tradition.

“We talked about what happened in districts. Nobody gave us a shot at districts and look what happened. If it can happen at districts, it can happen anywhere at any level,” he said. “I also used Hillsdale’s (state championship) baseball team from two years as an example. They had a (sub-.500) record, so I told the girls once you get into the tournament anything can happen.”

Anything, such as an upset of district host Hanover-Horton (20-14), did happen just last week, but they will have to beat Manchester (23-14) in a 12:30 p.m. contest on Saturday to keep the feel-good story alive.

The Flying Dutchmen are a team that has no trouble piling up runs, evident by the 13 games in which they scored double-digit runs this season, and last weekend they demonstrated their explosiveness.

Manchester had 15 hits in a 14-0 beat-down of Grass Lake in the district championship game and it should be noted that during the Cascades Conference season, Manchester scored 15 runs against Napoleon, a team gave up a total of three runs to the rest of the conference.

With that in mind, Alvarez said it is essential that senior pitching ace Kelsey Aemisegger gets off to a good start.

“Kelsey is the kind of pitcher, where she has to have that good start, she has to believe that her team is going to play well behind her defensively,” he said. “If she gets the feeling like what’s the sense in pitching the ball if I don’t have a defense behind me, that’s when she falls apart and she tends to lose her focus and her confidence.”

Last weekend Aemisegger had a good start coupled with a great finish in the Comets’  semifinals victory over Hillsdale.

She struck out 14 Hornet batters and allowed just two hits in a 5-1 win.

Alvarez said he needs more of the same production and leadership from Aemisegger for his girls to have their best shot at advancing.

“Kelsey’s probably going to be our horse the rest of the way out. Our team knows that Kelsey is the horse on the team,” he said. “I’ve used that to try to get Kelsey’s mind in the right place — I tell her all the time that she is the senior and this is what she wants. I tell her however she responds the team responds, so I need her to step up and be a leader.”

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Division 4 baseball and softball regional previews and picks

Here is a look at the Division 4 baseball and softball regional action that will take place at Homer this Saturday. A rundown of all of the matchups is followed by my picks:

Softball
Ottawa Lake Whiteford (22-8) vs. Camden-Frontier (16-6), 10 a.m.; Homer (20-10) vs. Petersburg-Summerfield (23-4), noon.; Championship 2 p.m.
Other media outlets continue to talk about Homer as the team to beat following a run all the way to last year's Division 4 state title game, where they came up short, but people need to remember they surprised plenty of "favorites" in 2008 and they could be upset themselves this year.
Ace Paige Winchell is nearly un-hittable on the mound at times and she mowed right through the opposing lineups in districts, but their hitting attack has been a bit hot-and-cold this season.
Winchell is hitting nearly .460 while Vickie VanWert checks in at .412, but the bottom of the lineup is not always a tough out.
Petersburg-Summerfield (23-4) is certainly a worthy opponent  in the semifinals, one from the extremely competitive Tri-County Conference, so they're battle tested to say the least.
Summerfield actually beat Homer 10-0 in the regional final two years ago, but many of the Trojan's top players were only sophomores.
Summerfield had it easy last weekend though, with a bye in the semifinals, and a 16-0 championship game win over Britton-Deerfield.
Ottawa Lake Whiteford is also at TCC team, one who has a 22-8 record and is led by top pitcher Kesley Hutchison. She pitched a one-hitter (against Waldron) and five-hitter last weekend to guide her team to the regional round.
Hutchinson, along with Kelsie Barron, Kim Lambert and Caitlin Granata of Whiteford were all named to the All-Tri-County Conference Softball Team recently.
Whoever starts on the mound for Camden-Frontier, Megan Schwartzengraber or Morgan Warfield, should create the opportunity for a fantastic pitchers dual with Hutchison.
This is the Redskins third regional since 2000, and second in a row, after they lost to Homer last season.
Editor's pick: One thing that makes this an extremely difficult regional to pick is the fact that all four of these teams have outstanding pitchers that can carry them through the entire afternoon. That said, I think Homer does get the job done against Summerfield because of how they've been playing and because Winchell has proven to be a big-game player, especially on her home-turf. I don't think things will go quite as well for C-F fans unfortunately. I'm concerned that their defense could hurt them if the game stays tight and they showed a bit of vulnerability against Reading in the district semifinals last Friday. I know they'll play their hearts out, but I think depth becomes a factor at this point. Ultimately it's almost a toss-up in the finals, but I'm going to go with Summerfield just because I'm tired of hearing Homer fans say how great their team is, when they couldn't even win a Big Eight crown.

Baseball
Homer (21-13) vs. Petersburg-Summerfield (13-10), 10 a.m.; Reading (19-9) vs. Ottawa Lake Whiteford, 12:30.; Championship 3 p.m.

The Rangers are playing the poised, championship style of baseball that people have come to expect of Rick Bailey's teams in June, but the competition will be stiff at the Homer regional Saturday.
They will face a veteran Ottawa Lake Whiteford team who starts seven seniors in the regional semifinals, after the Bobcats crushed Waldron 20-0 and beat Lenawee Christian 8-0 in district play last weekend.
Whiteford can put up some runs, like the 28 it put on Madison earlier this season, but most of their wins come via strong pitching and mistake-free defense.
On Wednesday the Bobcats played one of Division 3's best teams in Blissfield and lost just 7-6 at Adrian College.
Starting pitcher John Morrison pitched a three-hit shutout in Whiteford's district championship victory.
On the other side of the bracket, Homer faces Petersburg-Summerfield.
Homer is 20-10, but finished just fourth in the Big Eight and had a pair of easy 10-0 wins over Tekonsha and North Adams-Jerome in district play.
Summerfield is an interesting case because they are only 13-10, but they come from a strong TCC conference and are coming off an impressive showing in districts.
Jake Gilstorff pitched a no-hitter with 11 strikeouts in s semifinals bout with Saline Washtenaw Christian, before Tyler Glass hurled a no-hitter with five strikeouts in the championship game against Ypsilanti Calvary Christian.
Gilstorff also hit two homers and drove in six runs in the semifinals.
The competition was far from the best, but they dominated the field nonetheless, making them a tough read.
Editor's pick: I mulled over this one from sunrise to sunset Thursday, just because I try and give you my honest, well-thought out opinion, instead of what my heart's telling me. I came up with this: Reading's intangibles give them the slight edge over a fairly even field, but Homer has the home-field advantage. Thus, those two make the semifinals, setting up an all Big Eight final. I say if Reading can beat Camden-Frontier's Kurtis Tyler, like they did last week, they can hang with any pitcher as long as their own pitching and defense holds up. Part of me hopes Bailey thinks he can make it to the finals without putting Ryan Dillon out to the mound, so the Rangers can save him for the championship game. If this indeed happens it's just the edge Reading needs. Hopefully this savvy group of youngsters can make me look smart come Saturday.

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Redskin girls fall in regional play

By RJ Walters / Daily News Sports Editor

As published in the Hillsdale Daily News on March 11, 2009

The Camden-Frontier girls basketball team got another taste of what it’s like at the regionals level, but that’s all.

Amber Sammons led New Lothrop with 20 points and C-F star Morgan Warfield was held to just three points as the Redskins fell to the Hornets at Lansing Christian.

The Hornets are the defending Class D state champions and C-F head coach Melissa Warfield was certainly impressed with what they brought to the table.

“They’re a very good team and I think we were exhausted by halftime just from trying to play defense,” she said. “They move the ball around a lot and almost everyone can shoot from inside. Every shot they took was either a layup or a 3-pointer.”

On defense she said New Lothrop was equally tough to deal with, making sure Morgan Warfield had the ball in her hands as little as possible.

C-F trailed 17-10 after one quarter and the contest was all but over after a third quarter in which the Hornets outscored the Redskins 15-2.

“It was just one of those nights for our girls, but we’re  so young and it’s good to just get the experience,” she said. “We’re hoping the girls liked the little taste of success we had and they’ll want to get in the gym and work hard all summer.”

Ashley Root scored 13 points for the Hornets and Monica Confer added nine.

Danielle Abney led C-F with seven points, Megan Schwartzengraber added six and Effie Spieth and Kara Bryner both scored four.

The Redskins finish the season 15-8 overall.

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