Seeding didn’t deter regional baseball qualifiers
Olentangy baseball coach Ryan Lucas walked into the meeting room for the Central District seeding meeting two weeks ago knowing that not even a slick public relations director could help his team.
The Braves had lost five straight games, and that black mark wasn’t going away.
“We were 11-3 going into a game against (Olentangy) Liberty, but lost in 11 innings when we had the game won,” Lucas said. “Then we lost four more and our seeding was nine. Had we won that Liberty game, I think we would have been at least a fourth seed. We never worried about our seeding.”
Olentangy proved that seeding doesn’t mean much by defeating second-seeded Hilliard Darby 5-4 in a Division I district championship game.
The Braves (21-9) will play New Albany in a regional semifinal at 5 p.m. Thursday at Dublin Coffman. Top-seeded Olentangy Liberty plays Lancaster at 2 p.m.
“I thought that if you played good baseball, any team from the No. 1 seed through 15 had a shot to win a district championship,” Lucas said. “We’re finally healthy. All year long we’ve had injuries. Caden Kaiser was out six to eight games. We lost Logan Ketron, one of our best pitchers, to a torn ACL in his elbow. We haven’t had our lineup until recently.”
In the previous seven seasons, Grove City in 2012 was the lone No. 1 seed in Division I to advance to the state tournament.
Central Ohio is so deep that Pickerington North won the state championship as a No. 8 seed in 2016, and Olentangy Orange last season and Gahanna in 2014 reached the final four as No. 11 seeds.
Hartley coach Chris Sawyer, whose team plays Dayton Chaminade-Julienne at 5 p.m. Thursday in a regional semifinal at Mason, revealed how important being a sixth seed in Division II has been to his team.
“Our coaching staff has used seeding as motivation,” Sawyer said. “We told them that coaches don’t have a vote as to who wins the games. Yes, we sure did play the disrespect card.”
The Hawks (19-7) got a combined no-hitter from Matt McElligott (5 innings) and Luke Rawlins (1 to defeat second-seeded DeSales 1-0 in a district championship. The teams tied with 6-2 records for the Central Catholic League championship.
“You get on a good run and the next thing you know the kids are believing,” Sawyer said. “Everybody has got a couple of guys who can swing the bats, but our pitching and defense have been really good. Our pitchers throw strikes and our fielders make plays.”
Columbus Academy coach Todd Dunkle didn’t fret about his team having an 11-10 record going into the tournament as the 12th seed. The Vikings (15-11) play Archbold in a Division III semifinal at 5 p.m. Thursday in Elida.
“Seeding?” Dunkle said. “We don’t really care about that because you have to play against them all sooner or later. We got beat up during the season. We preach from day one that we are going to play a difficult schedule, because in order to be the best we have to play the best.
“We’ve played great programs — Jonathan Alder, Granville, Watterson and Hartley. We played some premier teams in Division III such as Fredericktown. These players don’t shy from playing anybody. They saw just about everything they could see before the tournament.”
The Vikings came from two runs down in the seventh inning to defeat Utica 8-7 in eight innings on a hit by Evan Scott in the tournament opener. In the district title game against fourth-seeded Northridge, they survived a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the bottom of the seventh to win 3-2 on a hit by Hayden Compton in the eighth.