St Patrick Return Ends in 1st-Time Celebration
June 17, 2017
By Andy Sneddon
Special for Second Half
EAST LANSING – A team that took a year to complete the journey against one that could be starting down the same path.
A year ago, Portland St. Patrick lost in the Division 4 Final. On Saturday, the Shamrocks delivered.
Dan Mackowiak had four hits and Devin Fedewa and Graham Smith combined to hold the fort on the mound as St. Patrick won its first MHSAA baseball championship, completing an undefeated season with a 6-2 victory over Hudson at McLane Stadium on the campus of Michigan State University.
“It’s indescribable,” said Bryan Scheurer, who is in his 13th year as the Shamrocks’ coach. “I’m so proud of them. Lot of hard work, and they let us ride them all year long. We’re very particular in the way we coach, and they’re coachable. That’s all you can ask for.”
A year ago, the Shamrocks fell, 10-3, to Sterling Heights Parkway Christian in the title game. On Saturday, they took advantage of some shaky Hudson defense – the Tigers committed three errors, all during the first two innings – in seizing an early 4-0 lead.
“I think (experience) was calming, but I also think it was motivating that we had done the runner-up thing before,” Scheurer said. “They wanted to go one step farther.”
Neither team was necessarily expected to go as far as it did in the tournament. The Shamrocks returned several players from last year’s runner-up squad but graduated some significant contributors, while Hudson’s 18-player roster featured just two seniors and 14 underclassmen.
“We wanted to win 20 games and just keep moving the program forward,” Scheurer said. “We wanted to win the league title, we wanted to compete for a District. Maybe the smartest thing I did was I didn’t tell (the players) that. They thought we were supposed to be really good.”
The Shamrocks (34-3-1) drew on the experience of having been there just 12 months prior, senior catcher and leadoff hitter Brendan Schrauben said.
“Watching the seniors go out last year like they went out, that’s not how I wanted to go out,” said Schrauben, who singled, tripled and scored three runs. “But they really paved the way for us. I’m glad we got the win. That’s how I wanted to go out.”
Fedewa, a freshman, struck out three, walked five and surrendered seven hits over five innings for the win. Smith struck out three over the final two innings for the save.
“That’s big,” Schrauben said. “It definitely relaxed us when we got out to an early lead. When we’ve got a freshman on the mound, that kind of eases his game. He was able to pitch aggressively.”
Sophomore Isaac Davis had two hits for Hudson (27-17), while Josh Heistan started and took the loss.
The Tigers, who were playing in a Final for the first time in school history, were unranked and finished sixth in the Lenawee County Athletic Association.
“If we show up and put the work in, then it’s a launching pad,” Hudson coach Jeremy Beal said. “If we’re content with it, then it was just a great run. As far as being a program definer, that’ll depend on this group of kids, if they want to put the work in.
“I think it was just a matter of making plays and not making plays. It was really that simple. We didn’t make a couple (early); we’re trailing 4-0 as a result of it. We had a couple opportunities to score runs and we hit balls at people or didn’t execute. If we do those things we’re in the game, and we’re one swing away.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Portland St. Patrick celebrates its first MHSAA title Saturday at McLane Stadium. (Middle) The Shamrocks' Dan Mackowiak slides into second base as the tag is applied.
St Mary's Completes Championship Climb
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
June 15, 2019
EAST LANSING – By the time the final weekend of the baseball season came around, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s was a juggernaut.
The young but incredibly talented Eaglets showed that by defeating their final two opponents by a combined score of 18-1, including an 8-1 victory Saturday against Grand Rapids Catholic Central in the MHSAA Division 2 Final at McLane Stadium.
But after a 7-9 start to the season, what seemed inevitable by the end looked far from certain.
“That Ohio trip (on spring break), we really just kind of bonded closer,” St. Mary’s sophomore second baseman Alex Mooney said. “We said, ‘Enough is enough, we’re not losing anymore,’ and that’s actually what we did – we haven’t lost since. You see all the talent, you see all the (college) commitments and stuff, and it’s like, ‘Why aren’t we winning?’ Then it finally just clicked, and everything just came together.”
St. Mary’s (34-9-2) finished the season 27-0-2 over its final 29 games to claim the fourth Finals title in school history, and first since 2015.
"It’s good putting it all together,” Eaglets coach Matt Petry said. “At the beginning of the year while we were struggling, we would get good pitching and we wouldn’t swing. Or we would swing and we wouldn’t get good pitching. For the last two months, we’ve kind of put it all together and we’ve won every type of game possible, and the guys were just really confident coming into this weekend.”
That confidence was evident Saturday, as the Eaglets were always in control against the Cougars thanks to strong hitting and a stellar pitching performance from freshman starter Brock Porter. In six innings of work, Porter struck out seven while allowing five hits, three walks and one run.
“I definitely have confidence in Brock,” Mooney said. “He’s no normal freshman, so I don’t think the stage ever gets too big for him. He’s going to be a stud.”
Senior Dillon Kark closed the game, allowing one hit before forcing a double play ball to end the seventh inning.
Petry said he had complete confidence in Porter, despite his age, but he also knew he had the full strength of his deep pitching staff at the ready thanks to a complete-game outing from Thursday’s starter Logan Wood.
“Brock has thrown great for us,” Petry said. “That was his first start in the playoffs, but he had three wins prior to today in relief. We really couldn’t make a bad decision, whether we wanted to start Brock or Anthony Fett or Mikey Gall, we were confident in all those guys, but we went with Brock. It started with Logan Wood on Thursday going a complete, that way we had the whole rest of our staff available. Some very talented guys and guys with experience. After Brock we had Dillon Kark closing it out, which was very valuable.”
St. Mary’s bats wasted little time getting going, as they scored two runs in each of the first three innings to jump out to a 6-0 lead.
Senior catcher Harrison Poeszat opened the scoring with an RBI single, and Kameron Arnold, who came in to run for him, made it 2-0 with some heads-up play. After he stole second, the throw went into the outfield and Arnold took advantage of the confusion to run home.
Mooney drove in a pair of runs with a single in the second inning, and the Eaglets added two more runs on an error in the third.
Catholic Central (27-11) got on the board in the fifth inning with a sacrifice fly from Kyle Tepper that drove in Nate Trudeau.
Jack Mooney put St. Mary’s up 7-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning with a sacrifice that scored Grant Henson, and an RBI triple from Nolan Schubart in the bottom of the sixth closed out the scoring.
“We looked at their lineup before we played and we saw that the bottom of their order, 7-8-9, were seniors,” Catholic Central coach Tim MacKinnon said. “When you have seniors hitting 7, 8 and 9, you have a pretty decent ballclub, and we knew that. We had seen them play Thursday, and we knew that they would come out swinging the bat, and they did. We didn’t get the results we wanted, but we got a good effort out of Joe Collins. But a couple of balls got left up, and they tattooed them a little bit and got some runs early. Then we had to fight back from there.”
Mooney led the way for St. Mary’s with three hits, while Schubert had two. Cole Sibley added an RBI.
Brenden Leonard led Catholic Central with two hits.
“We had a great season,” MacKinnon said. “We ran up against a really nice ballclub. Matt Petry does a good job with his team, and they played all aspects of the game very well. Porter did a great job, they hit the ball extremely well today and played good defense. After the game, I told (my team) they had a good season, and you don’t throw one season into a situation where one last game means everything for the season.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Orchard Lake St. Mary's Brock Porter makes his move toward the plate Saturday during the Division 2 championship game. (Middle) The Eaglets' Cole Sibley (9) slides into second base as Nate Trudeau awaits the throw.