Adams guides Severna Park to county championship
With the way Anne Arundel County baseball teams showed parity throughout the first complete season since 2019, it was anyone’s guess who would be involved in the county championship game.
After the smoke cleared, Severna Park and Arundel were left standing to meet Tuesday night at Bachman Sports Complex.
After a prolonged junior varsity contest on the only baseball diamond at Bachman, the Falcons and Wildcats finally stepped on the field around 8:15 p.m. Three hours later, with 19 runs exchanged between the two foes, Severna Park was crowned the county champion by virtue of a 12-7 win.
Colton Adams, pitching for the first time in almost two weeks, scattered five hits over five innings of work, allowing three runs with three walks, while striking out eight to earn the win for the Falcons. Seamus Patenaude finished 3-for-5 with two infield singles, two runs scored and an RBI, while Kody Phillips added two hits, including a double, and two RBIs for Severna Park.
“It’s been an improvement each game throughout the year. We had one of our best arms back tonight. Colton pitched a great game tonight and that’s what we needed,” Severna Park coach Eric Milton said. “We put up a couple runs, then he’d shut them down. We put up another run or two, then he shuts them down again. That’s big for us to get him back.”
The Falcons staked Adams to a 2-0 lead before he even toed the rubber as Phillips led off the contest with a double and Luke Herz also reached base. Adams and Herz both came around to score in the top of the first. After allowing one run in the Arundel half of the first, Severna Park scratched across two in the second on a walk, error and fielder’s choice grounder by Phillips to take a 4-1 lead.
Adams found his groove over the next three innings, sitting down nine of the next 11 Wildcats that came to the plate. Over the nineout span, the lefty struck out five batters.
Meanwhile, Severna Park pushed another three runs over the plate in the third inning, while adding two more in the top half of the fifth to put the visitors ahead 9-1 entering the bottom of the fifth.
Adams got into trouble in the fifth, allowing back-to-back singles by Daray Murdock and Corbin Werner as well as a double from
Nelson Grajales-Vasquez as the Wildcats cut the deficit to 9-3 after five.
Arundel showed zero sign of quit, holding Severna Park scoreless in the sixth then scoring on a sacrifice fly and error after a couple walks to get within 9-5 heading to the final frame.
However, the Falcons brought home three in the top of the seventh on consecutive hits by Phillips and Angel Santiago-Cruz, followed by a double by Herz, another infield hit by Patenaude and a single by Brooks Harris.
Arundel completed the scoring with two runs in the bottom of the seventh.
“These guys are young, they’re still learning the game, so the more we can teach them that’s how we need to play the game — the right way,” Milton said of his team’s ability to manufacture runs, especially with seven stolen bases.
“They’re starting to get it. They’re starting to pick it up. We wouldn’t have done that a month ago. In fact, we may have crumbled then. We just kept going after them. We’ll be better next year and the year after that.”
Arundel managed six hits, but took advantage of four Severna Park miscues and five walks to tally the seven runs.
“We weren’t as aggressive as we have been in the past. I felt like some guys fell behind in the count and tried to do too much,” Arundel coach Frank Hood said. “So we went right out of our own game plan, the way we have been playing the last few games.
“Defensively, we struggled to get our secondary pitches over the plate and get ahead in the count like we had been doing in the very recent past. Sometimes, when you go through a winning streak like we did, you need a little bit of a wake-up call. That’s what we’re going to use this as,” Hood added.
Severna Park kicks off state tournament action this Saturday as the top seed in Class 4A East Region II. After a first-round bye, the Falcons will host the winner of fourth-seeded South River and No. 5 Annapolis at 10 a.m. Saturday.
Conversely, Arundel earned the top seed in Class 4A East Region I and will face the victor of the contest between No. 4 Old Mill and No. 5 Meade at 2 p.m. Saturday.