Queen Creek wins title over Sandra Day O’Connor
Tait Reynolds watched Phoenix Sandra Day O’Connor intentionally walk two batters to load the bases and take its chances with him at the plate.
That got in his head.
“I was a little mad, for sure,” Reynolds said. “If I wasn’t so mad, I wouldn’t have swung at that pitch.”
After getting a slider on the first pitch, he thought he was getting it again. This time it was a fastball. He swung. He won.
Reynolds, looking for redemption after striking out in the eighth after a batter before him was intentionally walked, muscled the pitch off his fists, getting enough of it to put the ball in front of the left fielder and give No. 1 Queen Creek a 7-6, 10-inning, walk-off 6A baseball championship win at Tempe Diablo Stadium.
This not only was redemption for Reynolds, a sophomore quarterback who is one of the state’s top 2027 football prospects, but for a Queen Creek team that lost to Chandler Hamilton 4-1 in last year’s state championship game at the same place.
It also was a dream return season for its tough, demanding coach, Mikel Moreno, who served a self-imposed seasonlong suspension last year to prevent the Bulldogs from spending the season on probation (a post-season ban), giving them that state championship game taste.
Moreno’s outspoken words towards the AIA after his team had to forfeit a semifinal win over Hamilton in the 2022 playoffs after using an ineligible pitcher due to exceeding the pitch count got him and his program in trouble. But Moreno took the hit for the sake of the team. And that experience, that taste of championship defeat, ended up paying off big Tuesday.
Now they’re holding the school’s first state championship baseball trophy since 1989 when the Bulldogs were playing in 2A.
“I’m tough on them,” Moreno said. “This is a great reward for them and the hard work they put in. I’m very demanding. Sometimes maybe a little too demanding. But these boys responded and I’m so happy for them and their parents, our community. Queen Creek is the best school district in the state. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Queen Creek (25-7) finished on a ninegame winning streak, going 5-0 in the tournament, beating Chandler Basha twice by one run.
The sixth-seeded Eagles (24-9) fought their way to the final coming out of the loser’s bracket with three straight games of barely hitting but managing enough to get to Tuesday. They beat Liberty 2-1 on a walk-off walk, and defeated No. 2 Brophy Prep twice, totaling five runs.
On Tuesday, the Eagles scored two runs in the first on four hits, and three more in the second, sparked by a two-run double by Hustyn Wheeler.
O’Connor coach Jeff Baumgartner, who had three pitchers unable to pitch due to reaching their pitch-count limits, couldn’t have asked for a better start to provide freshman pitcher Jaylen Jimenez with a 5-0 lead.
But Queen Creek takes after its fiery coach, and with aggressive at-bats in the second, scored two runs on RBI hits by Alex Gamboa and Cameron Lopez.
Then, in the third, catcher Manny Hoyos, a sophomore, ripped a pitch over the left-field wall for a two-run homer in a four-run inning that tied the score at 6.
After that, it was a duel between relievers Brody Jacobs of O’Connor and Dylan Weekly of Queen Creek.
Weekly, a senior, who started the seasons as a catcher, only to lose the job to Hoyos, was called on in the second inning to stifle O’Connor’s suddenly hot bats. He did so over the next 8 2/3 innings of one-run, five hit relief.
“We said, ‘You’re role is to pitch,’ “Moreno said he told Weekly earlier this season. “He came out of the bullpen every game but two or three. He’s got great stuff. Just unbelievable. Nobody knows about him because he was a catcher. But people should know about him. He was just unbelievable.”
Weekly got stronger as the game wore on, sometimes needing just two pitches for O’Connor to get out, relying on his defense. He was running on adrenaline and poise as the game got into the 10th inning.
“Every day for us is a championship day, so it was just another day,” Weekly said. “Stakes are a little higher, but for us we prepare for this stage just like any other. So when I went in there, I was prepared for that.”
But this was by far the longest Weekly pitched out of relief in his life.
“I got tired after every inning but I kept going out there,” he said. “I had to throw my best.”
Whether it was tensions of a tied game and the championship on the line, Weekly found enough to allow just three hits and not let a runner reach second base from the fourth inning on. He got help from Hoyos in the eighth when he threw out a runner at second trying to steal to end the inning.
He retired the last six batters he faced. Queen Creek left the bases loaded in the fifth, left a runner on third in the seventh and left runners on second and third in the eighth, before Reynolds came through in the 10th.
Baumgartner said he was playing the percentages after Jesse Aguirre tripled to start the bottom of the 10th against righthander Rowan Glover, who came on in the eighth to pitch.
“I think it’s a right-hander (with Reynolds),” Baumgartner said. “Those two lefties (Ryker Waite and Cayden Cooper) I know they’re tough and we don’t have a lot of margin for error. We have a righty who throws fastball and slider. I felt we had a better chance. And we had a force out everywhere. I thought he made a great pitch. He was able to club it into left field.”
Moreno was proud of his team’s resiliency.
“Just keep competing, chip away, give us a chance,” Moreno said. “It’s 5-0, holy cow, we had a meeting. First offensive meeting we had all year. I don’t call meetings. I let these guys play. I don’t want to get in their way.
“We got better pitching and got plays on defense. Hats off to O’Connor. They scrapped and they were short-handed.”