King’s fall 9-4 in bid for title

WEST PALM BEACH — King’s Academy’s bid for a trip to Fort Myers and the state tournament was derailed Friday when visiting Clearwater Central Catholic defeated the Lions 9-4 in the Class3 A regional finals.

It’s the fourth consecutive year that King’s (17-13) lost in the regional finals.

Clearwater Central Catholic (26-4) denied King’s its first trip to the state tournament final four since the Lions won the Class 2A state title in 2001.

“I don’t believe in jinxes, but, I don’t know,” King’s coach Doug Magaw said. “Four years in a row we’ve been here. I’m very happy to make this kind of run, and we felt like we had beaten the best team in this division twice in two weeks.”

Magaw was referring to the Lions’ one-run wins against rival Benjamin in the district championship game on April 25 and the regional semifinals on Tuesday.

Clearwater Central Catholic, which has won four state titles, the last coming in 2007, slugged its way to next week’s Class 3A state semifinals with a 13-hit attack Friday.

Junior third baseman Brendan Overton, the Pinellas County home-run leader this season, smashed his sixth homer of the year, a two-run shot in the top of the first inning to stake the Marauders to a quick lead against King’s starting pitcher Jacob Krigbaum.

King’s knotted the score at 2 in the bottom of the second on an RBI single by Kyle Hanlon and a basesloaded walk to John Carpenter.

That was the last time the Lions crossed the plate until Carpenter hit a towering solo home run over the left-center field fence in the fifth. By then, however, Clearwater Central Catholic had added six more runs to take a comfortable lead.

The Marauders capitalized on back-to-back errors by King’s to regain the lead in the fourth and added four more runs on five hits and another King’s error in the fifth to take a commanding 8-2 lead.

“I didn’t see that coming,” Magaw said of his team’s costly errors. “We don’t ever throw the ball around like that. They just seemed to tighten up during the game, which is uncharacteristic of us.”

Clearwater Central Catholic extended its lead to 9-3 with a run in the top of the seventh. Back-to-back doubles by Carpenter and Ryan Johnson to lead off the Lions’ final at-bat brought the King’s dugout and its partisan crowd to life again, but an infield popup and a double play by Clearwater Central Catholic ended the game.

CLASS 2A

— Steve Dorsey The Zion Lutheran baseball team qualified for the regional tournament for only the 10th time in school history this year.

And the previous nine times, the Lions didn’t make it to the state tournament.

This time Zion Lutheran was blanked by Westwood Christian 11-0 in a Class 2A Regional Final in Deerfield Beach. The last time Zion had reached the regional finals was in 2000.

It was also only the second time the Lions had been shutout in a 16 regional games dating back to 1998