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ALTON – As the regular season winds down for the Roxana High School baseball team, a huge home-and-home Cahokia Conference series against Freeburg would make or break it for the Shells.
As of Thursday, it helped make it.
The teams met in Freeburg on Tuesday, and Roxana won 2-0. Mason Crump pitched a complete game, striking out seven while only allowing two hits.
On Thursday, Roxana leaned on their sophomore Bradley Herrin. He battled some adversity, but threw the first 4.1 frames on Thursday, earning the win as Roxana outlasted the Midgets by a score of 5-4.
“He’s the only kid on the team without his driver’s license,” Roxana head coach Jerry Wheaton joked about Herrin.
It was a day that Wheaton wasn’t exactly sure who to put out on the mound after Herrin. Landon Sitze was the choice made, and he got the job done, but the Shells’ pitching staff is loaded.
“Sometimes it’s hard,” Wheaton said. “It is for us as coaches, like today, do we go to Sitze? Do we go to [Dalton] Carriker? Carriker hasn’t thrown in a couple of weeks because he’s had a little bum shoulder, and he was ready to go today. Herrin, he’s got a sub-two ERA. Trevor Gihring has pitched 20 innings, and he has a sub-one ERA. I’ll throw anybody out there. I’ve got seven, eight dudes that I trust to get outs.”
Scheduled as a home game for the Shells, the contest was moved to the turf at Lloyd Hopkins Field after some morning showers made Roxana’s field unplayable.
The venue change didn’t faze Freeburg as it scratched a run across in the top of the first.
Evan Rapp took a leadoff walk and moved to second after Max Biehl’s sacrifice bunt. Rapp got to third after Cole Miller singled and then scored thanks to Sam Rauckman’s RBI single to make it 1-0.
The Shells didn’t have an immediate answer in the first, but would tie the game in the second.
Kael Hester hit a leadoff triple, and then Kaden Carlisle was hit by Christian Giovando’s pitch to put runners on the corners with no outs. Trevor Gihring swung at first-pitch fastball and singled on a line drive to right, scoring Hester to tie the game at 1-1.
Roxana widened the margin in the third.
Crump led off again and this time doubled, then Max Autery was walked, and Sean Maberry singled to load the bases with no outs. Crump scored on Hester’s sac fly before Carlisle hit into a fielder’s choice to move the runners.
That helped Gihring, who doubled on a fly ball to left, scoring Autery and Maberry to make it 4-1.
But Freeburg battled back. The Midgets strung some singles together in the fifth as Dane Johnson and Zach Diekemper each came up with RBIs to make it 4-3.
Then, Roxana came up with a two-out rally in the bottom half when Lucas Hartman got hit by a pitch and advanced to second on a passed ball. That brought up Carriker who singled up the gut to tack on a final run for the Shells.
It turns out, they needed it.
Johnson hit a leadoff triple in the top of the seventh to make relief pitcher Landon Sitze sweat a little bit. Sitze got back-to-back dropped strike three Ks thanks to a couple of nice throws from the catcher, Max Autery. But Sitze did give up the RBI single to John Higgins to make it a one-run game with one out left to get.
All of a sudden, the skies opened up, and for the game’s final batter, Sitze had to work in a downpour. It didn’t matter as he got pinch hitter Gabe Lueth to fly out to end the game.
“He’s had a rollercoaster season a little bit,” Wheaton said of Sitze. “He’s really, really good, and when he’s good, he’s good. Today, that was his senior moment. He understood the situation, where that guy at third base didn’t mean anything, got two big strikeouts.”
The Shells celebrated by sliding headfirst on the wet turf into left field for their postgame talk.
“These kids, they’re just having fun right now,” Wheaton said. “The reason we have 18 wins is because of our pitching staff. And our offense today was really good; we scored some runs when we needed to. It’s fun when your kids can achieve things they want to achieve.”
The win brings Roxana to 18-7-1 and 6-3 in the Cahokia Conference, tied with Breese Central.
One of those things they want to achieve is a 20-win season.
“Two years ago, we were at 12 or 13 wins,” Wheaton said. “And last year, we asked those three seniors, ‘What’s the goal?’ The first one was to win the conference, and the other was to win 20 games. It was a goal last year, and this season, they’re just hungry to do it again.”
Those three seniors – Aidan Briggs, Kyle Campbell, and Elias Thies – helped Roxana to its first 20-win season since the Mike Arbuthnot days when the Shells went 23-11 in 2010.
Now they have the chance to do something that hasn’t been done since the early 2000s, have back-to-back 20-win seasons. Roxana went three straight from 2000-2002 under head coach Joe Huff, Roxana’s winningest coach.
One of Roxana’s current assistant coaches, Robert Rahn, was on those teams. Wheaton praised his assistant.
“He was a huge part of that run, so he knows what winning is all about,” Wheaton said. “He played college baseball at SIUE, and he brings a lot of electricity, a lot of knowledge to our kids.”
And obviously, the conference is still up for grabs.
Breese Central’s final conference game was supposed to be on Thursday, but was moved to Saturday against East Alton-Wood River. The Cougars previously beat the Oilers 16-1.
Roxana plays Salem on Monday, May 12, at 3:45 p.m. Salem narrowly beat the Shells 3-0 back on April 28. If Central wins on Saturday and Roxana wins on Monday, they will split the conference with 7-3 records.
Freeburg's loss on Thursday eliminated them from the situation.
Columbia won the conference a year ago at 9-1, Roxana its only loss. The Shells had an opportunity to also get to 9-1 but lost their final conference game of the season, 5-4 to Salem.
“Salem was the team that kept us from sharing the conference last year with Columbia, so there’s a little bit of vengeance there for our kids,” Wheaton said. “And it could be win number 20 as well.”
But before what could be a historic game on Monday, the Shells first have to get through Senior Day on Friday, May 9, against Jersey. First pitch is at 4:30 p.m.
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