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GLEN CARBON - The Father McGivney Catholic baseball team was held to three hits on the day as St. Joseph-Ogden defeated the Griffins 6-1 in the Prep Baseball Report Kickoff showcase tournament Thursday afternoon at Griffins Field in McGivney's home opener.
The Griffins are coming off their second-place finish in last year's IHSA Class 1A playoffs, the first appearance for the school in a state final, and got off to a great start in their opener, winning 13-1 at Carlyle Monday afternoon. The Spartans took a quick lead and never allowed the Griffins' offense to get going.
"We just couldn't get anything going today," said McGivney head coach Chris Erwin. "Their pitcher threw a whale of a game, he moved the ball in and out, up and down, and kept us off-balance all game. He was, on the (radar) gun, at 90-91 miles per hour, which is fantastic."
Erwin felt both his team and St. Joe-Ogden, who advanced to the Class 2A Super-Sectional game before being eliminated in 2021, felt it was an evenly-matched game going in.
"I think the two teams are evenly matched," Erwin said. "The score was 6-1 today, they just got the better of us. We only gave up two earned runs today and it was the first time outside for us on our field."
The Griffins are seeing the showcase event as a way to play against good competition early in the season and to see how the team would stack up against some of the better teams in the northern part of the state.
"I wanted to play in this kickoff classic," Erwin said. "They had some really good players and they threw their best two guys (Tyler Altenbaumer and Hayden Brazelton) at us, which was good for us to see that top pitching early."
The Griffins got hits from Daniel Gierer, A.J. Sutberry and Gabe Smith, who hit a solo home run in the sixth for McGivney's only run.
"Gabe's home run was a nice piece of hitting," Erwin said. "against a really good pitcher."
The Spartans scored twice in both the first two innings and added solo runs in the third and fourth to give them a 6-0 lead before Smith's homer in the sixth. Brazelton led with three hits and an RBI, while Griffin Roesch had two hits, Altenbaumer and Adam Price each had a hit and RBI and both Coby Miller and Andrew Beyers drove in a run each.
The Griffins are now 1-1 and are set to host Joliet Catholic Academy Saturday morning at 10 a.m., then play at Carrollton on Tuesday afternoon before hosting Marquette Catholic in their first Gateway Metro Conference tilt Wednesday afternoon, with both games starting at 4:30 p.m. Erwin feels that his team will bounce back and play well.
"We'll bounce back." Erwin said, "and it's good to see this kind of competition early."
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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