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HCC wins Region
VI;
On to World
Series
By Steve Carpenter
HCC Sports Information Director
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
WICHITA – Thirty years is long enough.
That’s how long it has been since the
Hutchinson Community College baseball team had won the Region VI
Tournament. That’s what freshman outfielder Lindy Wray, whose father
played on that 1975 Blue Dragon team, was thinking when he led off the
bottom of the eighth inning in a tied Region VI championship game with
Garden City Tuesday night at Lawrence Dumont Stadium.
Wray hit a solo home run off Preston
Reichard in the eighth and Sean Peery made it stand up with 7 1-3
innings of gutsy relief work as HCC rallied from five runs down twice
to defeat Garden City 8-7 in the decisive title game, which was forced
by another come-from-behind victory over Garden City on Monday night.
Hutchinson (37-20) won its second
regional title overall and will make its first appearance in the NJCAA
World Series ever when the Blue Dragons play New Mexico Junior College
at Noon MDT on May 28 at Suplezio Field in Grand Junction, Colo.
In head coach Kyle Crookes’ first
season as skipper, he’s led the Blue Dragons to a share of the Jayhawk
West championship, a regional tournament top seed and now a regional
title. To get there, the Dragons had to defeat Garden City in five of
seven meetings this season.
Tuesday’s comeback victory was typical
of the Blue Dragons throughout the five days in Wichita. The Dragons
had 13 come-from-behind wins in the first 51 games. They had four in
Wichita alone. HCC trailed in every game but its first-round victory
over Allen County. But that game was tied going into the bottom of the
ninth when Luke Naccarato’s single scored Thad Weber to win it.
After that game, the Blue Dragons
scored 13 runs in the final three innings of the next five games to
come up with improbable comeback after improbable comeback, taking out
the likes of Garden City, Cowley College and Butler along the way.
Four of Hutch’s five wins at Lawrence
Dumont were by one run, the other was by two runs.
Tuesday was no different. HCC trailed
5-0 after two innings on home runs by Luke Gorsett and Joe Servais off
starter Jason Banks. The lead grew to 6-1 before the Dragons started
to chip away at Garden City ace Aaron Breit by scoring at least one
run in every offensive inning from the fourth inning on.
Hutchinson still trailed 7-5 heading
into its half of the seventh when the Dragons tied the game with two
runs on no hits and not one ball leaving the infield.
That set up Wray’s heroics in the
bottom of the eighth when he hit a 1-1 offering from Reichard over the
left-field wall to give HCC an 8-7 lead.
Perry made Wray’s blast – his second
home run of the tournament and his sixth of the season – stand up with
a 1-2-3 ninth. But that final inning didn’t come without a major scare
from Garden City. Gorsett, the nation’s home run leader who already
had four clouts in the tournament, hammered a Peery pitch to dead
center that many thought was out of the park. But Andy Dirks, with his
back against the ball and the 400-foot marker right above his head,
made the catch. After that Andy Preston grounded out to Naccarato at
third and Luke Dreiling lined out to second baseman Brandon Doherty,
setting off a wild Blue Dragon celebration.
Overshadowed by the comeback was the
performance of Peery, a freshman right-hander who hadn’t pitched in
three weeks. He took over for a struggling Banks, who was going on
three days rest after throwing more than 130 pitches against Allen
County on Friday.
Peery allowed single runs in the fifth
and seventh innings, but other than that, the freshman from Highlands
Ranch, Colo., kept the powerful Broncbuster offense off balance. Peery
allowed two runs on five hits, but struck out five and walked only
two.
Garden City outhit HCC 10-9 and the
Dragons had only one extra-base hit, Wray’s homer. Freshman Todd
Schonhoff, making his second start of the tournament in left, was 3
for 4 with an RBI, while Wray was 2 for 4 with two runs scored and
three driven in. Five different Dragons drove in runs.
HIGHLIGHTS
Garden City, one of the teams that
shared the Jayhawk West title with Hutchinson, took charge early with
power. Gorsett crushed a two-run homer in the first, then Servais hit
a wind-aided three-run shot in the second for a 5-0 Buster lead.
Banks, who threw more than 50 pitches in 1 1-2 innings, was relieved
by Peery in the second inning.
The Dragons finally got on the board in
the fourth. After a Noah Krol leadoff walk, he advanced to third on
two wild pitches and scored on Wray’s groundout to third. The Busters
answered in the top of the fourth on a Curtis Smith sacrifice fly for
a 6-1 lead. HCC added one run in the fifth when Torey Williams scored
on a Dirks’ groundout and finally broke through against Breit in the
sixth.
Krol, Weber, Wray and Schonhoff started
the fourth with consecutive singles. Wray and Schonhoff’s singles
pushed across runs and a Naccarato sacrifice fly trimmed the Buster
lead to 6-5.
Garden City’s Dreiling led off the
seventh with a solo homer to give Garden City a 7-5 lead, but the
never-say-die Dragons kept battling back.
The bizarre HCC seventh started with
Doherty getting hit with a pitch and Dirks walking. Andrew Prignitz
moved them both up 90 feet with a sacrifice bunt, but the Busters
loaded the bases when Reichard hit Krol with a pitch. Weber then hit
into a 5-4 fielder’s choice, but Doherty and Dirks hustled to both
score on the play. Dirks was safe at home when Servais couldn’t
handle the throw from Preston that would have been in time.
The Busters looked to have something
going in the eighth when Perry plunked leadoff hitter Ryan Urzendowski
with a pitch. After Smith struck out, Williams, HCC’s catcher, threw
out Urzendowski while he was trying to steal second. Servais flied out
to Wray in right to end the inning.
Wray led off the eighth with a solo
homer to give the Dragons an 8-7 lead and Peery retired the side in
the ninth to end the game.
QUOTES
Head coach Kyle Crookes
Discussing his feelings about
coming back to win the regional championship …
“I’m really, really proud of my kids.
They believe and they did such a great job of being resilient and
coming back all weekend long. That takes a lot of energy and a lot of
heart. That’s something that you can’t coach.
“I’m just lucky to have the kind of
kids that I have. It’s more of an indication of the kids. Nobody
expected them to compete at this level for this long and they wanted
to prove people wrong.”
On his thoughts about rallying
from a 6-1 deficit against Garden City …
“This is about the most resilient team
that I have ever seen. I don’t think that there was a whole lot of
doubt that we would start to chip away, especially after the way Sean
(Peery) started throwing. They kept chipping away and chipping away
and we started to get some opportunities and we came up with big hits
from a lot of kids.”
On Sean Peery’s performance …
“Low and behold another hero. Peery
hasn’t thrown in the whole tournament. He comes out and shuts the door
the rest of the way. He has that kind of stuff and we are lucky to
have him to use in that situation.”
On playing small ball against
powerful Garden City …
It’s something I believe in and it’s
something that finally translated (to the kids) throughout the course
of the year. That’s a lot of hard work and it matters to them. If they
didn’t care about it, they probably wouldn’t do it.”
On Luke Gorsett’s deep fly ball
to center in the ninth that was caught by Andy Dirks …
“It was a good thing that we have a big
enough park to hold it in center field because that ball was hammered.
If it would have been hit anywhere to the left of the scoreboard it
would have been out of here by a mile with that wind.
“All of this what we’ve done takes hard
work and ability, but it takes some luck. The balls bounced our way.”
Freshman Lindy Wray
On the Blue Dragons’ comeback
against Garden City …
“We had trouble getting into a rhythm,
but as the game went along, we starting getting into a rhythm and we
built momentum, got some big hits and started to score some runs.”
On the point in the game where he
thought the Dragons had the momentum …
It was the fifth or sixth. I had a
double and (Todd) Schonhoff had a hit to right field and score me,
then we got some momentum. We are a team of spurts and we knew if we
could keep it going, we could get it done.”
On his eighth-inning home run to
put HCC on top for good …
“The first ball they pitched me was a
curveball low and the next one was a fastball outside. So I knew they
weren’t going to throw me a fastball inside, so I was looking for a
curveball and I luckily guessed right and I drove it out of the
ballpark.”
“I was in a slump coming into this
tournament and I was bound and determined not to carry it in here. I
took a lot of hitting practice and I was just tying to hit that the
pitching gave me.”
Freshman Sean Peery
On making his first appearance in
the tournament …
“I haven’t pitched in so long, it was
like three weeks. I didn’t think I was going to get in and all of the
sudden I’m in the championship game. It’s all a blur now. Coach asked
me if I was ready to go and I said ‘let’s do it.’ ”
On facing Garden City’s potent
offense …
“I didn’t know what I was thinking. I
just went in there and tried to throw strikes.”
On Gorsett’s deep fly in the
ninth …
“When he stepped in the box, that’s all
that I was thinking, ‘don’t let him leave the yard.’ I have done well
against him before and I just thought of him as another batter.”
On the team’s comebacks …
“We were ranked fifth in preseason and
we have worked our butts off. We don’t give up. We come back a lot in
the late innings, but we don’t give up.”
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