Memories of last year drive Arrowhead
Arrowhead was cruising to its first spring baseball state championship last season, and that may have been the problem.
The Warhawks scored four runs in the bottom of the first inning and allowed just five hits through five innings against Burlington in the Division 1 title game. The Demons, however, responded with two runs in the sixth and four more in the seventh for a 6-4 victory.
“When we jumped on them in the first inning, it kind of seemed like guys thought the game was over,” Arrowhead senior shortstop Tanner Williams said. “We didn’t expect them to come back and we sort of took our lead for granted.”
With three Division I recruits, it was not the ending envisioned by the Warhawks, who recently switched from the summer season and were playing in their first spring tournament since 1957.
“Even my coach was down; that’s the first time I’ve ever seen him sad,” Arrowhead’s Jeff Holtz said.
“When we jumped on them in the first inning, it kind of seemed like guys thought the game was over.” TANNER WILLIAMS ARROWHEAD SHORTSTOP
That coach was Vince Mancuso, who left shortly after last season to take a teaching job and become assistant baseball coach at Oconomowoc.
Arrowhead 2007 graduate Nick Brengosz was hired for his first head coaching position after spending last year as a varsity assistant with the Warhawks.
He had to replace pitcher Ryan Schmitt (first-team allstate, Illinois), utility player Nate Brown (first-team allstate, Florida), outfielder Dom Clementi (second-team all-area, Michigan) and outfielder Johnny Duranso (honorable mention all-area), who could have played at UW-Oshkosh but decided to just play football for the Titans.
“There was a lot of really good talent,” Brengosz said. “But I thought it was a really nice situation to come into just because when you graduate all those guys, I really didn’t think a lot of people — not that they thought we would be bad — thought we would be in the hunt for third (place in the Wisconsin Little Ten Conference). Which is understandable.”
Arrowhead shared the conference title with Oconomowoc and Catholic Memorial at 13-3, but it was not like Arrowhead lacked talent.
Junior catcher Jeff Holtz (Indiana) is second on the team with a .474 batting average, Williams (Winona State) is second with 26 runs and 31 hits, and senior second baseman Blake Cottrell (UW-Oshkosh) is third with 24 runs. There’s also sophomore pitcher Davis Zeutzius, who is 7-1 with an 0.97 earned-run average.
He is one of the reasons the 21-4 Warhawks have allowed more than three runs just twice in the last 16 games and earned a return trip to state.
Fittingly, they play Burlington at 8 a.m. Tuesday in the quarterfinals at Fox Cities Stadium in Grand Chute.
“We’ve wanted it all year,” Holtz said. “We were actually counting down the days until we could play them again this year, but it got canceled. So it’s awesome we finally get a rematch against them, and hopefully revenge.”
And this time, Arrowhead knows how to handle an early lead if it happens again.
“We’re not going to have that relaxed sort of feeling that we had last time,” Williams said. “We’re going to be going for the kill sort of, putting the foot down, and hopefully jump out to an even bigger lead.”