Friday June 18, 2021
From Tom Haines
Celina’s Dylan Feister, 10, rushes in to try to put the tag on St. Henry’s Br. . .
ST. HENRY – For once, the Celina ACME baseball team hit the ball really well. But the Bulldogs needed more.
Celina made eight runs on 11 hits but succumbed to a St. Henry team that went up in flames. The Redskins lit starter Quinn Andrew for nine runs and tackled two more for insurance in an 11-8 win at the Wally Post Athletic Complex on Thursday.
“He hit his points,” said Celina coach Bryce Monnin of Andrew. “Hats off to you for hitting the ball. He threw in the dirt, they went down and got it. He threw outside, they went out and got it. He didn’t know what to do.”
Andrew’s day ended when the Redskins finally pulled away in the third. St. Henry based out on a pair of singles and an error, and Bryce Brookhart went into potential double play but only hit the throw to get a run and keep the inning going. Andrew looked at another run score thanks to a mistake on a double steal, then went with Shane Franck and pitched Drew Schwieterman before Monnin came out to take the ball.
Clayton Everman hit a two-run single-off reliever Dylan Feister for 9-6 before Feister stopped the bleeding with a strikeout.
“We really focused on two-shot hitting and two-shot chasing the outfield,” said St. Henry coach Tyler Burns. “We have to protect ourselves and we also focused on making sure that strikeouts didn’t look like. Everything close by, we have to get the ball into play and force them into a game.”
Feister gave up two runs on consecutive doubles from Franck and Schwieterman in the sixth run, but ended with six strikeouts and was able to limit the damage.
“I think we threw Quinn too much off track,” said Monnin. “Dylan came in and realized we had to screw them up.”
The Bulldogs added a run in the fifth on a single in the middle of Jack Hassan, but left two more stranded and then got another on Andrew’s Bloop single in the sixth. But Andrew was caught stealing, and after reaching two more runners, Feister was kicked out with a botched pickoff.
In the seventh, after a walk and hit-by-pitch, Celina dispatched a pair of runners to bring the bond run to the plate, but Blayn Aller flew into midfield to end the game.
“We finally hit the ball,” said Monnin. “We make up and hit it hard. Still a lot of missed opportunities. I don’t know how many people we left on the base, but we left a lot of people on the base.”
Redskins starter Devin Delzeith outlasted Andrew by three innings, recovering from a rocky start to keep the Bulldogs at bay. He was charged with all eight runs and 11 hits but did just enough as the Redskins braced their way to victory.
“He hit the hit zone well and you have to give Celina credit, they knocked the snot out of the ball,” said Bruns. “We just have to keep playing defense and throwing games, that’s all we can ask for.”
After the Bulldogs drew the first blood in the top of the first, St. Henry wasted no time. Clayton Everman hit a line drive deep into the left center to double the Redskins with a double RBI, and with two outs, Nolan Kunkler hacked a weak grounder into no man’s land on the left side of the infield to score another run and hold The inning alive. The Redskins got a walk and Tyler Schwieterman hit a two RBI single before Andrew got the third out with another flyball to the left.
With a deficit of 5: 1, it was Celina’s turn to react, and she emphatically did so. Beginning with a single by Zander Jones, the Bulldogs hit and missed five runs of their own to regain the lead, all five runs with two outs.
“A lot of the runs we had, a lot of the hits we had were with two outs,” said Monnin. “We missed the fight these guys had all night all summer. We missed it in the spring too, so it’s good to see the tournament coming.”
Celina gets a chance to recover against Minster tonight while St. Henry travels to Van Wert for a double header on Saturday.
