Escanaba derails Gaylord's title hopes
Jun. 12—GAYLORD — Escanaba targeted this game as much as any other on the schedule.
Probably more.
No. 7-ranked Esky was able to pay back No. 1-ranked Gaylord for a one-run regionals loss last year with a 3-2 Division 2 regional championship game victory Saturday at Gaylord High School.
"We've been waiting a full year for this," Escanaba head coach Andy Fields said. "This is a game the girls wanted all year. We've got three more games in our travels here, but this is the one that we marked down last year."
Esky lost 6-5 to Gaylord last season, and had a runner on third in the last inning. The Blue Devils then advanced all the way to the state semifinals with a team loaded with underclassmen.
Escanaba has the more veteran team in terms of age, with multiple senior starters, but both teams started a freshman on the mound.
Aubrey Jones went all seven innings for Gaylord, striking out six and scattering five hits. Grayson LaMarche picked up the win with seven innings of three-hit ball, striking out 12.
"Someone asked me if we're nervous," Gaylord head coach Kelli Parker said. "And I'm like, 'No, this is what we do.' We we hit the ball, we know how to play, we have confidence in ourselves."
Escanaba scored first with a run in the opening inning. That was the only score until the sixth.
"They punched us in the mouth and think of the first inning and took a little bit of wind out of our sails," Kelli Parker said. "But this team competes."
The Blue Devils did just that, rallying to take the lead on a sixth-inning Alexis Kozlowski single to right field that brought in both Jayden Jones and Alexis Shepherd for a 3-2 lead.
Escanaba's Carsyn Segorski answered with a two-run home run in the seventh, a line-drive shot to left field.
Escanaba beat Grant 8-0 in the day's opener, while the Blue Devils advanced to the finals with a 7-0 shutout of Big Rapids as Avery Parker threw a three-hitter, striking out seven and tossing four 1-2-3 innings.
"She hasn't pitched a whole lot or played a whole lot because she's been out with an injury," Kelli Parker said. "She did a nice job and our defense is just phenomenal."
Jayden Jones drove in freshman Kennedy Wangler with a single up the middle in the fourth for a 5-0 lead.
The Devils broke loose for four runs in the third frame, with Abby Radulski's double to the left-field wall bringing in two and Aubrey Jones and Alexis Kozlowski each driving in one.
Jayden and Aubrey Jones hit solo home runs in the 6th for a 7-0 lead, with Jayden passing off the Blue Devils' "Bomb chain" to her sister after a brief ownership of the gold chain adorned with a medallion reading "Queen."
The future remains very bright for Gaylord, which doesn't lose a starter to graduation. Only Radulski and Kozlowski are juniors among the starters. Six sophomores (seven counting injured Braleigh Miller) and two freshmen round out the lineup, and Kelli Parker said the team has several talented eighth-graders on the way up as well.
"It should set the fire for next year," Kelli Parker said of the loss.
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