Missed chances haunt Cascade in 2A substate baseball final loss to Wilton

SOLON — This one’s gonna stick with these guys for awhile. And not in a good way.

Cascade’s baseball team literally was one hit away in Tuesday night’s Class 2A substate final against Wilton. One hit away it seemed about 20 times.

Twenty-five times.

Of course, that’s hyperbolized talk here. There were only seven innings in this game.

But had the Cougars just come through one more time, one little old time at the plate, especially in the late innings, they wouldn’t have had to suffer a 4-3 loss to their River Valley Conference mate. Suffer the end of their season.

“If you look at the way that we’ve won our last couple of games, coming up with the big hit when needed,” said Cascade Coach Roamn Hummel. “We didn’t get it tonight.”

Cascade (14-13) scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the first inning for an early 2-0 lead, but left another potential run that inning on base. It scored a run in the third but left another runner at third.

Cougars were stranded and second and third in the fourth inning and again in the fifth. The tying run was left at second base in the sixth.

“We felt like all of a sudden, our guys started playing with tension,” Hummel said. “I didn’t sense that at all our last two games, but I did tonight. Really kind of the whole game, it felt like guys were taking good pitches. We kind of told them, we pick up on sequences that pitchers go through and told them ‘Hey, this guy does this. He’s going to come back with this.’

“Their pitcher did that, he did that. But we took those pitches ... You wonder why that is. Maybe the moment got a little big, but a lot of these guys have played in that moment, so I didn’t expect that to happen.”

Then came the bottom of the seventh. Ty Frashier and Cooper Hummel worked leadoff walks.

A gutsy double steal put Cougars at second and third, which forced Wilton (21-10) to intentionally walk Will Hosch to load the bases and none out, in hopes of a forceout anywhere.

Rattled Wilton relief pitcher Kane WIlley regained his poise, though. He struck out Cass Hoffman swinging for the first out, then coaxed Nathan Schockemehl to ground a ball to a drawn-in Wilton third baseman, who fielded and threw home for the force and a second out.

Eli Fritz then hit a groundball toward the middle that Wilton’s second baseman fielded and scooted to the bag just in front of the Cascade runner for a forceout that ended the game.

“It just wasn’t a good sequence for us there at the end when we got those guys on,” Hummel said. “Sometimes you run into that a little bit. You want to say ‘I’m going to grab the bull by the horns and get it done.’ Instead you’re waiting for the next guy ... That’s kind of what the night felt like for us.”

“It was shaky in the seventh,” said Wilton’s Willey. “Two walks there. I didn’t think I was going to get out of that with no runs scored. Very nerveracking, game to go to state, we haven’t been there for awhile. To be able to do it is prettty awesome.”

Cascade was seeking its third straight state tournament appearance. Considering this season was sort of wonky for the traditionally strong program, to get back to this substate final point and get “that” close to getting back to state is an accomplishment.

Look at the future of this team. Tuesday’s starting pitcher Jackson Green was a freshman, leadoff hitter and shortstop Leo Noonan an eighth-grader.

It’s good.

“I think we were about 6-10 at one point this season,” Hummel said. “There were parts of me thinking we were going to get a low seed in districts. What are we going to do, because we’re going to have to play somebody good. I told the guys I was pretty emotional about the game, not coming up with a hit. But I’m super proud of where they ended. To be at this point. At the midpoint of the season, I said there was no chance. I felt we’d lost a first-round game. But give them credit because they played their best at the end.”

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