Varsity Baseball defeated Fort Zumwalt North and South in the District tournament to earn a spot in the Championship game against Fort Zumwalt West on May 15. With the season on the line, the Knights put junior Tyler Ferguson on the mound.

In the first three innings, the Knights committed three errors and gave up five runs but were able to get a run of their own with an RBI sac-fly from sophomore Steven Deckard. In the 4th inning though, the Knight’s pitching staff struggled as the Jaguars got five runs to make the score 10-1. The Knights responded in the top of the 5th as they got RBI hits from Jeremy Warden, Andrew Curran, and Deckard to get the score to 10-5. However, their pitching couldn’t keep the game close as they gave up four more runs in the bottom of the 5th.

“If we could have improved on the location of our pitches, we would have done a lot better today,” said Pitcher Danny Goggin.

Even though the pitching struggled, the offense for the Knights was strong as they got another RBI hit from Curran and a 3-run homerun from Dave Prost to decrease the Jaguar’s lead with a score of 14-9.

“What we did really well today was definitely our hitting. We had a bunch of big hits including Dave’s 3-run bomb,” said Outfielder Ryan Clifton.

In the top of the 7th, the Knights went 1-2-3 to end the game. Fort Zumwalt West won the game with a final score of 17-9 to win the District Championship and move on to the State Tournament.

During the District tournament, the team believed they played the best they’d played all season even though they were unable to defeat FZW.

“This season didn’t go as well as we hoped, but in the tournament, we played our best baseball,” said Clifton.  “We came in as underdogs and were able to upset two really good teams.”

 The Varsity team ended with a record of 8-20 on the season. The team was disappointed with their record because they didn’t play up to their potential during the season.

“This season had it’s ups and downs–we never really played up to our potential except for the District Tournament,” said Outfielder Patrick Cronin.

For next season, the team hope to improve on their record. They know what they need to work on over the off-season.

“If we want to win more games next season, we need to work on our hitting so we can get more timely hits,” said Goggin.