The prep baseball season ended Thursday night with a Game 3 finals win by Lovett over Westminster in Class AAA and a doubleheader sweep by Parkview over Mill Creek in Class AAAAAAA. It was Lovett’s ninth baseball state title all-time and Parkview’s seventh.
Class AAAAAAA
Parkview 3, 5, Mill Creek 1, 2
Parkview took two hotly contested games, the first in eight innings, from Mill Creek to win the championship on its home field. In Game 1, Parkview got a 3-1 win with all of the offense coming from star senior Logan Cerny. Cerny had a solo home run in the first inning and hit a walk-off two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to put Parkview up 1-0 in the finals. Alex Boychuk had a solo home run for Mill Creek in the top of the first inning for the Hawks’ only run. Robert Bennett started the game for Parkview, pitching seven innings and striking out five.
In Game 2, the Panthers were leading just 3-2 in the top of the seventh before Isaiah Byars gave his team two insurance runs with a two-RBI single. With the score 5-2, Parvkew starting pitcher Braden Hays was pulled for Cerny with one out in the seventh, and Cerny recorded the save with the tying run at the plate to give Parkview its seventh title. Hays had seven strikeouts in his 6 1/3 innings, and only one of Mill Creek’s runs was earned. Parkview took a 2-0 lead in the top of the third when Brian Ketelsen scored on a wild pitch and Cerny scored on a Jonathan French hit. Mill Creek came right back in the bottom half of the inning to tie the game 2-2, but Ketelsen drove in Allan Del Castillo to put the Panthers up 3-2 before Byars’s game-breaking hit in the top of the seventh.
Class AAA
Lovett 2, Westminster 0
Lovett won the Class AAA championship Thursday night in Rome after splitting the first two games of the series in Macon on Monday night. The victory marked the ninth state baseball title for Lovett.The game was scoreless for five innings before the Lions struck in the top of the sixth on RBI singles by Will Seiler and Peyton Ringer.
Westminster, which left 10 runners stranded in Game 3, had its chances, but solid pitching alleviated the problems. In the bottom of the sixth inning, Lovett's David Underwood entered the game to relieve Dhruv Patel, who had not given up a run and had pitched a fine game through 5 2/3 innings.
Underwood, with two outs, would face the first batter, Luke Jannetta, with runners on first and third. A wild pitch advanced the runner to second and, the walk loaded the bases. Underwood pitched to a full count against WIlliam Hallmark before forcing a pop-fly out to strand three runners and protect the 2-0 lead.
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