Defending champs too much for Van Wert

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports editor

AKRON — Van Wert’s dream season came to an end in the Division II baseball state semifinals at Canal Park in Akron on Saturday.

Nick Wissman held the Cougars to two hits and No. 8 Van Wert committed three errors in a 7-1 loss to defending state champion Dayton Chaminade Julienne.

Van Wert finished the season with a school record 27 wins and just three losses. The No. 1 Eagles improved to 26-2 and will face No. 10 Gilmour Academy in Sunday’s Division II state championship game.

Two of Van Wert’s throwing errors occurred with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning and allowed the Eagles to snap a 1-1 tie when Jack Huffman and Sebastian Gongora scored.

“You can’t give a team as good as Chaminade any extra outs and we certainly did that with some errors, walks and other things that came back to haunt us big time,” Van Wert head coach Charlie Witten said.

“Those errors broke the game open for us and once you get through like that it kind of deflated the other team and gave us a lot of energy,” Chaminade Julienne head coach Mike Barhorst said.

Chaminade Julienne extended the lead to 4-1 in the fifth when Andrew Tillman scored on a wild pitch, then the next batter, Gongora, who finished with a game high three RBIs, drove in Wissman and Andrew Simones with a single up the middle, giving the Eagles a 6-1 lead.

“I told the guys we had to put the ball in play, cut down on the strikeouts, put the pressure on the other team and that’s kind of how things happened,” Barhorst said.

The game’s final run came in the sixth inning when Simones tripled in A.J. Solomon.

Jake Lautzenheiser and Nathan Temple each singled in the first inning for Van Wert, and Lautzenheiser gave the Cougars a 1-0 lead when he scored on a sacrifice fly by Lawson Blackmore.

After a slow start, Wissman improved to 11-0 by striking out nine, walking none and retiring the final 20 Cougar batters.

“Give a lot of credit to him,” Witten said. “We had a good approach in the first inning and we had some good at bats against him throughout the game, but he kind of got into a groove and kept us off balance a little bit.”

In his final high school start, Blackmore pitched 4.1 innings and allowed six runs (four earned) on three hits with five strikeouts and four walks. Maples went the remaining 1.2 inning and gave up a run on two hits while striking out two and walking one.

Witten said the loss doesn’t mar what was an outstanding season.

“When we look back at what we accomplished, a WBL championship is cause for a great season if we stopped there,” Witten said. “The tournament run we had against some very good teams and accomplishing a goal of getting to a state tournament was big, and just being the first Van Wert team to get there was a pretty neat experience.”

Box score

VW 100 000 0 – 1-2-3
CJ 000 231 x – 7-5-1

Line score

Van Wert (ab-h-r-rbi): ss Jaxson Amweg 3-0-0-0; 2b Jake Lautzenheiser 3-1-1-0; c Hayden Maples 3-0-0-0; 1b Nathan Temple 3-0-1-0; p Lawson Blackmore 2-0-0-1; dh Parker Conrad 3-0-0-0; lf TJ Reynolds 2-0-0-0; rf Keaton Brown 2-0-0-0; cf Jalen McCracken 2-0-0-0; 3b Owen Treece 0-0-0-0

Pitching (ip-h-r-er-bb-so): Lawson Blackmore 4.1, 3-6-4-4-5; Hayden Maples 1.2, 2-1-1-1-2

Chaminade Julienne (ab-h-r-rbi): 2b AJ Solomon 2-2-1-0; cf Andrew Simones 2-1-1-1; p Nick Wissman 2-1-0-0; 1b Sebastian Gongora 2-1-2-3; rf Jack Huffman 3-1-0-0; c Jacob Hieatt 2-0-0-0; pr Brendan Kadel 0-0-0-0; 3b Dylan Snyder 3-0-0-0; dh Elliot Seelig 3-0-0-0; lf Andrew Tillman 3-1-1-0; ss Cameron Benoit 0-0-0-0

Pitching (ip-h-r-er-bb-so): Nick Wissman 7.0, 2-1-0-0-9