By Kai Raymer (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Coleman Morrison and teammate Cole Schoen couldn’t believe the news.
Springfield Catholic, a top 5-ranked team all season in Class 4, was seeded third in its district tournament.
The coinflip tiebreaker that put the Irish in the No. 3 slot – meaning an extra district game to play – certainly grabbed their attention.
“We talked about it a lot.” Morrison said. “I thought we deserved the No. 2 seed. We played a stacked schedule. I think we earned it, but you can’t win them all so we had to go out and prove it tonight.”
Said Schoen: “It definitely was a sign of disrespect. We believe we were a top-2 seed, but what can you do? I was definitely a little mad when I found out, but you just have to prove them wrong.”
Playing with an extra point to prove, Springfield Catholic came to life late on a misty Tuesday night in the Class 4 District 10 Tournament semifinals at Logan-Rogersville High School.
The Irish rallied to beat 2-seed Mountain Grove 5-1, with all five runs coming in the final two innings against the Panthers’ bullpen.
“We just stayed with it and believed in ourselves,” said Springfield Catholic coach Courtney Spitz. “Anybody can win, any given day. It was a tough position with all this mist coming down, but I think our guys battled to the end and stayed focused.”
Catholic will play tournament host, top seed and Class 4 No.-1 ranked Logan-Rogersville at 5 p.m. in Wednesday’s district title game.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Logan-Rogersville beat Catholic 12-6 in late April. The Wildcats won’t see Catholic ace Ben Smith again, like they did in the regular season. Instead, Catholic’s No. 2, Morrison, figures to get the starting nod.
“It’s never an easy call to throw your No. 1 in a district semifinal,” Spitz said. “But I live and die on, ‘I’m going to play my best when I got my best.’ I never want to sit with an ace in the pocket. We just had to put our best foot forward tonight.”
The majority of Tuesday’s semifinal content was a battle of ace pitchers: Catholic’s Smith and Mountain Grove junior Brylon Mayberry.
Mayberry struck out 10 in 4 2/3 innings, limiting Catholic to just two hits and four walks.
“I look at it and say, ‘How many times can we get through the lineup and just keep seeing his pitches?’” Spitz said. “I felt really confident the third time our guys went through the lineup, seeing him more. (Mayberry) was out at 105 a little earlier than I expected. That’s a credit to our guys for getting some long at-bats and putting base-runners on early, even though we couldn’t cash in.”
Smith threw five innings before giving way to Schoen in the sixth. The Mizzou commit allowed four hits and two walks while striking out eight.
“It takes a full seven innings to beat any team,” Spitz said. “We had Ben Smith on the mound and we got what we knew we were going to get out of him. Just a tremendous outing from him. He kept Mountain Grove to one run, and that always give you a chance to win.”
Trailing 1-0, Catholic finally broke through in the sixth with Mayberry off the mound. Ben Ruter led off the inning with a triple then scored on Colin Soetaert’s RBI single.
“We were struggling a little bit, but as soon as we saw a new arm, we got excited and were ready to hit,” Schoen said.
The Irish (17-7 overall) added two more runs with a bases-loaded walk from Hans Kaiser and a sac-fly RBI from Jack Schoen.
“You get one big hit, that gets it going from there and we feed off that. Credit to our guys for staying locked in and being dogs,” Spitz said.
Catholic tacked on two insurance runs in the seventh, thanks in part to three Mountain Grove errors.
“Ben Smith was excellent on the mound, he shut down the other team like he always does,” Morrison said. “Their pitcher came out and threw well, too, but we just had to stick to our approach of seeing it, hitting it (opposite field) and grinding to get on base.
“It took a little bit, but we were finally able to put some runs up there at the end.”
The outcome gave Spitz 100 career wins as a head coach, all coming at Springfield Catholic. Spitz, a Drury graduate, took over the Catholic baseball program in 2017.
Since then, the Irish have won at least 17 games every season including three district titles and a state runner-up finish last year.
On the other side, Mountain Grove (24-9 overall) reached the 20-win mark for the second straight season. Despite the success, the Panthers never cracked the state rankings in Class 4 all season.
