Solon beats Marion, seniors go out playing for another title (with video)

DES MOINES - No way this was going to end any other way.

An athletically legendary bunch of seniors at Solon is ending their careers playing for a state championship. Go figure.

“I'm glad we're back, for sure,” Solon's Ryan Butler said after the Spartans whipped Marion, 11-2, Friday afternoon in a Class 3A semifinal at Principal Park. “All these guys have been together for so long. Since fifth grade. We're all back again, and we wouldn't want it any other way.”

Charlie Sheen needs to contact Butler and his classmates if he wants to know the true meaning of winning.

Solon (38-4) tries to go back to back in baseball when it plays Harlan (21-14) in tonight's title game at 6. There are the four straight state football championships, of course, and a state track and field title last year.

Some of the senior Spartans played for a state championship in basketball two years ago and a soccer title this spring. Simply amazing.

“These seniors are pretty amazing,” said Austin Dall, who went 4-for-5 with three RBIs Friday as the lone junior starter. “Just to be tagging along in the journey with them ... they're just like older brothers to me. They've accepted me, shown me how to do things.”

“When you're on the stage that often, you get used to it,” said Solon Coach/Athletics Director Keith McSweeney. “They expect to succeed, they expect to give a peak performance. Obviously those kids came to play today.”

Yeah, to the tune of 17 hits. Solon got to sophomore lefty starter Levi Lochner of Marion for a run in the second, three in the third and four in the fourth. The fourth-inning runs were unearned.

Lochner (6-1) pitched extremely well this season but was no match for Solon, which beat Marion (27-17) for the third time in as many games.

“We had no doubt that we could hang with them,” said Lochner. “It just wasn't our day today.”

“I was a little concerned last night watching Levi's eyes. He was very nervous, and understandably so because he is a baby faced sophomore on a big stage,” said Marion Coach Steve Fish. “I overheard him say this morning at breakfast that he had a dream last night that (Solon's Derrick) Loveless hit one off of his head. I told my coaches ‘Oh, he's awfully nervous' ... But that was his first loss of the year.”

Marion got its runs in the sixth on a two-out, two-run double by Andrew Charipar. The inning could have been bigger since Josh Davila appeared to get brushed on the elbow by a Nick Day pitch with the bases loaded, but the umpire ruled the pitch hit Davila's bat, and he ended up striking out.

“This shouldn't take anything away,” Fish said of a season in which Marion advanced to state for just the second time and won a game for the first time. “I've got disappointed kids right now because they truly believed that they could win a state championship. It didn't happen, but it was a great run ... They've got nothing to be ashamed of.”