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EDWARDSVILLE - This was a game that indeed was worth the price of admission, which you don’t say often.
On Friday afternoon in the Class 4A Edwardsville Regional Championship, the Edwardsville Tigers and O’Fallon Panthers went to-toe-to with each other.
Heading into the bottom of the eighth holding onto a 5-4 lead, the Tigers were two outs away from upsetting the Panthers when O’Fallon’s Jake Holan stepped up to the plate for the 51st time this season and was batting just over .250, but he had just played a vital role in the game. In the top half of the inning, Holan made a diving catch on a sinking line drive in left field to save at least a run.
Fast forward to the bottom half of the inning, on a 3-1 pitch from Matthew Boyer, Holan completed the improbable and lined a home run over the left field fence to tie the game much to the delight of coach Jason Portz who leaped to the air like a cheerleader.
“I was trying to have a good at-bat. Just work the count and try to get on base for the next hitter, and hopefully get to second for the tying run. I got to 3-1, he threw me a fastball, and I didn’t miss it,” Holan said about his at-bat.
The crazy thing is, if it weren’t for the injury to Caleb Shelton in the fourth inning, Holan wouldn’t have been in the game.
The home run gave O’Fallon all the momentum.
After Nick Boone and Jeremy Reno got on base back-to-back, the leadoff hitter, Josh Gibson who was 0-for-4 in the game, came through with a base hit into left scoring Boone for the game-winning run.
The Panthers outlasted Edwardsville 6-5 in extra innings to claim the regional championship and avenge their season-ending loss to the Tigers in the Sectional Semifinals a year ago.
“You feel for your guys when you know they’re struggling. These guys have battled all year long, we’ve been down in ball games and battled back,” Portz said. “The postseason is about unknown heroes. Jake Holan is an unknown hero. He’s done nothing but bleed Panther baseball his entire career. He got his opportunity today... Best baseball game I’ve ever been involved in.”
O’Fallon moves to 33-3-1 and advances to the Bloomington (Illinois Wesleyan) Sectional Semifinals and awaits the winner of Belleville East and Collinsville.
For Edwardsville, it’s a tough one to swallow.
A pair of two-run home runs by Jack Cooper in the first and Drake Westcott in the third gave them a 4-1 lead.
“That was a battle there. You never like losing, but that was a heck of a game and definitely one we’d like to come on the top end of it. Both teams kept fighting and [O’Fallon] ended up getting the prize in the end,” Tigers coach Tim Funkhouser said.
Starting pitcher Chase Gockel put in a solid 5.1 innings of work. He gave up two earned runs and two hits while striking out and walking two batters each.
“He was awesome. He got better each time out, and we expected him to do good things,” Funkhouser said. “He competed his tail off and just kept making pitches and [O’Fallon] puts up a lot of runs, and the wind is blowing out. I couldn’t be more proud with the way our guys competed.”
The Panthers lineup would, however, chip away at the lead inning by inning scoring a run in the third and fourth before tying the game on a sacrifice fly by Boone in the sixth.
On defense, Jaysn Miller relieved Juenger in the fourth and threw three shutout innings while giving one hit and striking out three for which Portz claimed that, “saved the game for us.”
In the seventh, O’Fallon very nearly won the game.
Tyler Stanton pinched-ran for Braydon Arnold, who advanced to third base off a wild pickoff throw from Boyer. Edwardsville then intentionally walked Matthew Albritton to set up a double play situation.
A double play is what they got.
Juenger grounded to Cole Hampton who threw to Cooper and then to Westcott to complete a game-saving 6-4-3 double play.
“It’s one of those things we talk about in practice all the time, and it might not happen for two years. They had Juenger at the plate who can run a little bit, so it had to be crisp. That was one of the best defensive plays I’ve seen in the postseason,” Funkhouser said.
Two walks and a base hit by Cooper loaded the bases with no outs for the Tigers to start the eighth. Catcher, Dalton Wallace who was 0-for-3 drew a bases-loaded walk to retake the lead for Edwardsville. However, Portz brought Juenger back onto the mound, and it proved to be a successful move as Juenger got Hampton, Ohl and Joe Copeland to fly and ground out, which included a diving a catch from the hero, Holan.
“[Holan] made a great play and obviously we’d like to bury some more runs there and put [O’Fallon] behind the 8-ball,” Funkhouser said. “We knew the lineup was rolling there, but it would’ve been nice to push more across there with the bases loaded.”
