A little rain wasn't going to spoil the fun for Tim Funkhouser and his Edwardsville baseball team Friday evening.
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Off-and-on storms throughout the day Friday forced the cancellation of one game of the Tiger Classic round-robin tournament between Highland and Chatham-Glenwood, but the second scheduled game between the Tigers and Lockport, from the Chicago area, was moved to the JV field across from Tom Pile Field.
And it turned out to be the scene for a historic win by the Tigers – Funkhouser's 510th career win as the team's coach, a 4-1 win over the Porters that put him past Pile as the program's all-time coaching wins leader.
Funkhouser took over the team in 1999 after having been coach at Triad; he was appointed after Pile's retirement following the 1998 season, which turned out to be the second of his two state championship years (the other one was in 1990 – which featured Funkhouser as the Tigers' shortstop).
“I've been coaching awhile, and we've achieved great things,” Funkhouser said after the game. “It's a lot of fun to be a part of a program like this. We've had a lot of support over the years from many people.”
Of the game itself, the Porters got off to a quick lead, but the Tigers bounced back in the third to tie it and then took the lead in the fourth with a pair of runs. EHS pitcher Trey Riley, once he got past the first inning, shut down the Porters effectively, throwing only 90 pitches and getting out of a jam in the sixth that saw runners on first and second with two out.
“My arm felt pretty good,” Riley said. “I worked with coach (Mike) Waldo and he helped me with some things I needed to do, like keep my head still and get my knee up. It's helped; I just went out there and threw today.”
“Trey was really good today,” Funkhouser said. “All three of his pitches were working today; his slider was really good. I can't say enough good things about how Trey did today; he didn't make a lot of mistakes.”
Lockport jumped on top early when Jeremy Quade doubled on Riley's first pitch and Tyler Nassar sacrificed him to third on the second pitch of the game. Quade then scored on a wild pitch, but Riley shook it off and got Tyler Hair to pop out to second and Stephen Hill to fly to right to end the inning.
EHS tied it in the third when Bailey Zimmer opened with a single and Mitchell Krebs and Joe Wallace drew walks to load the bases. One out after that, Collin Clayton hit a sacrifice fly to left that scored Zimmer and tied the game. The next inning, the Tigers took the lead when Jake Garella singled and Fahd Shakeel walked to put runners at first and second. Zimmer singled in Garella to give the Tigers the lead, and Shakeel scored on an error to extend the lead.
The Tigers' final run came off Garella's bat when, with two out in the fifth, he took a 2-0 pitch from Jordan Johnston over the fence in left-center for a home run and a 4-1 lead. Riley shut down the Porters the rest of the way.
The Classic is scheduled to resume tomorrow with games set for 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Edwardsville is slated to face Highland first and Chatham-Glenwood afterwards.
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