Sports Texoma

CORINTH — Sometimes it takes baby steps to reach one’s goals, and if the Blue Ridge baseball team needed any proof, all it had to do was look across the diamond to the Windthorst dugout.

The Trojans fell to Trenton in the 2008 regional semifinals yet gained a significant amount of experience. They combined it with a stellar pitching performance by Abel Vasquez for an 11-1 win in the rubber game on Saturday of the Class 1A Region II finals at Falcon Field on the campus of Lake Dallas High School to advance to next week’s state tournament in Round Rock.

Five Tiger seniors saw their seasons end prematurely, but the sophomore-laden team could very well have learned the same lesson. The unfortunate thing for third-ranked Blue Ridge (27-6) is that it will be a long wait until February after losing to a team twice for the only time all season.

Vas-quez (3-0) entered the game with a minuscule 0.78 earned-run average and needed only 77 pitches (54 strikes) to mow through a Blue Ridge batting order hitting above .400 for the season. He allowed six hits and one earned run with no walks and six strikeouts.

“He did a good job of keeping us off balance — not so much with his off-speed stuff, but inside and out keeping our kids guessing,” Blue Ridge coach Matthew Todd said. “I told our guys to be patient, but when he brings something over (the plate), we have to do something with it. We weren’t hitting the ball like we did (the first two games).”

Zack Gidney (6-1), like Tye McKinney on Thursday night, suffered his first loss of the season and at an inopportune time. He is one of the Tiger youngsters who look forward to building from the loss.

Gidney was unable to pitch around two-out trouble in the first inning, as the Trojans (32-8) scored a pair of runs after three of the first four batters reached base on an error, infield hit and a walk.

First baseman Cole Hemmi, the Game 1 starter who had only one hit entering Saturday, saved his best for last, finishing 3-for-4 and giving Windthorst all the runs it would need with his two-RBI hit in the first.

McKinney and Charles Deckard opened the bottom half of the inning with back-to-back hits and were each 2-for-3, but the rest of the lineup was only 2-for-20.

Windthorst was held at bay the next two innings, with Gidney retiring the side in order in the fourth, but it was Vasquez who pitched around another pair of singles by McKinney and Deckard after shortstop Colin Schreiber fielded Gidney’s ground ball at the second-base bag and turned a double play to foil the only other serious Blue Ridge threat the rest of the way.

“Their pitcher had us off balance all day long, and Windthorst hit the ball really well today,” said assistant coach Scott Wilson, who played with coach Todd on the 2000 Blue Ridge team that remains the only one to advance to the state tournament.

Vasquez helped his own cause with a leadoff double in a three-run fourth inning, and the Trojans singled four times in both the sixth and seventh innings for the final six runs.

The future is bright, but the loss dampened the spirits of the senior quintet of team captains Shane Williams, Robert Todd and Hayden Griffin along with Trevor Lintzen and Layne Foster.

Williams, the school’s valedictorian, took the team on his shoulders all season long and especially in the 5-3 Game 2 victory, pitching around six walks with 11 strikeouts and allowing Blue Ridge to see another day. He finished 4-for-10 in the series and was third on the team with 49 RBIs behind leader Todd (54), who was 3-for-10 in the three games.

Griffin made a game-saving play on a pickoff at third base in Game 2 and was the team’s emotional leader, Lintzen moved in from Louisiana and hit better than .350 while Foster won no less than two games with his clutch hitting.

They set the table for what the rest of the team hopes is just the beginning of great things to come for the Blue Ridge program.

“We had a good year with a young team that will carry on the tradition next year and hopefully go further and make up for the mistakes we made at crucial moments,” Lintzen said. “It hurts pretty bad knowing I’m not going to be able to play baseball anymore, but they had a strong pitcher who deserves a lot of credit. We won 20-plus games in a row without losing, and I’ve never been a part of anything like that.”

Blue Ridge scored three runs in the second inning for the second time in as many nights on Friday but this time was able to hold on for the two-run win setting up the decisive third game.

Williams went 2-for-3 with three RBIs, while Deckard also finished 2-for-3 with an run-scoring triple and finished the series with a team-high .500 batting average.

Bradley Wright also had a hit for the Tigers, with Addison Williams delivering a key sacrifice fly in the third for a 4-1 lead. Zach Rainwater followed his 2-for-3 performance in Game 1 with solid defensive play at second base.

“We’re obviously upset, especially for the five seniors we’re going to miss,” coach Todd said. “We’ve got a young group of guys who will try to get back here in the years to come.”