Buchholz's baseball season ends with Region 1-6A final loss to Winter Springs
Buchholz High ran into a red-hot lineup of bats and fell one win short of advancing to the program’s first state baseball tournament with a 10-8 loss to Winter Springs Tuesday night in the Region 1-6A final.
The visiting Bears came to Gainesville as the region’s eighth-seeded team, a ranking the belied their recent run of postseason power. For a third consecutive playoff game, Winter Springs totaled 10 or more hits, scored 10 or more runs, and took down a higher-ranked opponent with its battery of bats.
The Bears’ pop at the plate was on display from the first at-bat, when Sam Downey opened the game with a lead-off home run on the opening pitch. The visitors added another run, but Buchholz was quick to respond. In the bottom of the first, Anthony Wilkie singled to score two runs, and Nicholas Taylor scurried home after a successful pick-off for an early 3-2 lead.
The score stayed that way through three more innings until the Bobcats pulled starting pitcher Wilkie before the start of the fifth. Conner Brown came in, and the Bears’ bats came alive again. After a game-tying single, Jacob McKenzie – a Florida International commit and one of seven Bears committed to play NCAA Division I baseball – blasted a three-run bomb that cleared the deepest part of the centerfield fence for a 6-3 lead.
“We’d score runs and they’d come back,” said Buchholz coach Ron Brooks. “We just didn’t have those shut-down innings. They kept momentum throughout the game.”
Winter Springs carried its momentum into the sixth inning, plating two more runs to build what seemed like a commanding 8-3 lead.
But just when it looked most bleak, the Bobcats responded.
After scratching out two runs to begin the sixth, Donny Hiebert’s bases-loaded chopper that got through the shortstop and into shallow left field scored two more runs. Two batters later, Noah Hayse’s ground ball up the middle took a jump off the pitcher’s mound and squeaked into center field, scoring the tying run, and suddenly Buchholz was very much back in business.
“They care about one another,” Brooks said, explaining the effort in tying the game. “They truly care about fighting hard for each other.”
Alex Kastensmidt took the mound in relief to begin the seventh and struck out two Bears, bringing the Bobcats one out away from an opportunity to win the game with a single run in the bottom half. But with two outs and two Winter Springs runners on, Marco Gonzalez sliced a two-RBI hit into left field, pushing the Bears back in front, 10-8.
“The belief in these guys is unbelievable,” said Winter Springs coach Mike Bradley. “It got hairy there when they put up five runs in the sixth, but we just made plays when we needed to.”
Buchholz went three-up, three-down in the bottom of the seventh, bringing a close to a its season with a 21-7 record, and a return to a region final for the first time in 14 years.
“We didn’t play clean tonight, but our hearts showed through and through,” said Brooks. “I’m proud of the year we had. This team got us back on the map a little bit, and we’re focused on taking this forward.”
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Region baseball final: Eighth-seeded Winter Springs defeats Buchholz
