I just wrote about the team and game that won the Regional Championship for Lutheran High School in 2017. The opportunity to win that Regional came about due to a big win against University High School in the Sectional Championship. The Sectional win basically came down to one at bat and one hit. For the 2017 season, the IHSAA moved Lutheran High School to the Sheridan Sectional. We had won five consecutive Sectionals at that point, so whether the IHSAA moved us on purpose I do not know, but it seemed suspicious. The new Sectional included University, Sheridan and Bethesda Christian. New opponents and also a longer drive to play the games. At least they had a Dairy Queen!
We played Bethesda Christian in the first game and won it handily, 17-0. Our next opponent for the championship was to be University. We played them in a doubleheader a couple of weeks before this game and won them both. Noah Wood pitched the first game that we won 4-3. Aiden Bradbury won the second game with a score of 10-0. Against Bethesda Christian, Matthew Alter started and pitched 3 innings. This season was the first with a pitch count that impacted how many days would be required between appearances. Against Bethesda, Matthew threw 33 pitches. It turned out to be fortuitous that he just pitched the 3 innings.
As Aiden had dominated University a few weeks previously, we had him ready to start against them for the Sectional Championship, two days after defeating Bethesda Christian. As Matthew had only 33 pitches against BC, he required only one day of rest per the Pitch Count Rules, and he would be in relief. The combination of Matthew and Aiden had been very successful for us, so we were optimistic.
A wrinkle against us was that University was saving its number one pitcher for us. We had not seen him during the doubleheader a few weeks before. His name was Garrett Hill. He had transferred to University from Zionsville High School. The word we had was that Garrett threw in the low 90’s and that as a junior he would have been behind 6 other guys at Zionsville that also threw with velocity. Made sense for him but gave us concern. In the game we were the visitors and hit first. Our line-up for the day was:
SS | Pat Kem |
CF | Jacob Faubion |
3B | Carson Thomas |
C | Noah Wood |
P | Aiden Bradbury |
1B | Matthew Alter |
2B | Alex Kem |
LF | Zach Sanders |
DH | Brett Reid |
RF | Jared Snead |
As he did so often, Pat started us off by getting on base with a walk. Jacob then hit a ball to the thirdbaseman on an 0-2 count. Their player misplayed the ball so we had runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs. Carson Thomas then singled and we scored the first run. With runners on 1st and 2nd , Noah hit a sharp groundball up the middle but their shortstop made a nice play, stepped on 2nd and threw to first for the double play. Two outs and a runner on 3rd. Aiden then walked on a full count. We took a chance and Aiden stole second base successfully. We had been fortunate in that Hill was not able to settle in very well. He had walked two batters, given up a hit and there had been an error. University was hoping that the double play would help get them out of the inning.
Now with runners on 2nd and 3rd and two outs, Matthew came to the plate. After 6 pitches the count was full. Matthew had fouled a couple of pitches but Hill was throwing hard. On the 7th pitch Hill came with a fastball and Matthew smoked a line drive up the middle to score both runners and give us a 3-0 lead. Obviously our team and fans were elated. One could almost hear the air come out of the bag for the University team and their fans. It seemed like the game was over due to that hit in a crucial situation. The game went on and we knew they could come back. Aiden had a good first inning though he did hit the second hitter, who stole second and then went to third base on a wild pitch. The third hitter struck out on a 3-2 fastball and the clean-hitter flew out to right field. In the top of the second we scored another run with the help of another error by University, a wild pitch, a sacrifice bunt by Brett Reid and hit by Jacob Faubion.
In the bottom of the second, Aiden struggled by hitting the first two hitters, 3 hit by pitch in 5 batters We decided to bring in Matthew and then have Aiden to bring back in later in the game when he could be more relaxed. Matthew struck out the first hitter on a curveball but the ball got by Noah and they now had runners on 2 nd and 3 rd with one out. The next hitter hit a groundball to Pat at shortstop and threw to first for the out. The number nine hitter also hit a groundball to Pat for the third out. After two innings, we led 4-1.We did score another run in the 4th without a hit to make the score 5-1. Idon’t think it made much of a difference as Matthew only gave up 2 hits therest of the way. Matthew ended up having 83 pitches for the game with 4 strikeouts.
At some point after that game, their coach, Chris Estep, said they really thought they were going to win that game and go on in the State Tournament because they had Garrett Hill and some others.We had a great team victory. In some games a play happens that impacts the rest of the game and the outcome. In this case, Matthew’s hit with two outs and a full count, made the difference. If he had made an out, University would have been all excited and had enthusiasm going forward. Instead, Matthew hits a sharp line drive up the middle and University gets down. It was our game after that. Off to Dairy Queen!
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