King William falls to Poquoson in region baseball final
The pressing question facing the King William Cavaliers isn’t so much what happened to them Thursday night in the Region 2A baseball championship game because what happened was painfully obvious.
The Poquoson Bull Islanders, their longtime nemesis, came to town as if on a mission, jumped on them early and often, and scored a 12-7 victory to claim their sixth consecutive regional title, the third straight at the Cavaliers’ expense.
The question, then, is this: How will Coach Kenny Waters’ guys respond to the unanticipated gut punch they sustained before their home crowd, considering that their season is still alive with a VHSL, Class 2 quarterfinal matchup at Strasburg, the Region 2B winner, on the docket for Tuesday?
“You’ve got to be a grown man,” said senior right fielder Stevie Walton, the lone returner from the team that played for the state title a year ago. “You’ve got to suck it up and keep playing ball and having fun. It’s about being loose and fighting to the very end.
“Coach Waters said it best in practice. He believes that our path is our path. How we get there will be determined by tonight.”
Tonight, to the Cavaliers’ chagrin, seemed doomed from the outset.
After a scoreless first inning, the Islanders (13-11) strung together four singles and capitalized on three errors to take a 3-0 lead from which the Cavaliers, try as they might, could never recover.
“When you give a good ball club more opportunities, whether it’s, you should have caught a ground ball or you should have caught a fly ball, you get yourself in a bad situation,” said Waters.
“That’s what we did tonight. We were able to come back and scrap together some runs. Seven runs will win you a lot of games, but we gave too many runs away to be successful. We’ll flush this and keep working on fundamentals, and hopefully next game, we’ll make a few more plays.”
The Islanders, who pounded out 15 hits and availed themselves of five King William errors, scored thrice more in the top of the third to go up 6-0.
“After we got our first hit, it lit the torch to the point where everybody carried the momentum and helped contribute to the whole,” said senior catcher Daniel McAdams, who went 2-for-3 with three runs batted in.
“Our pitcher (Dan Sperling) definitely set the tone. That helped us get to where our bats were on fire and we could not be stopped.”
When their hopes were spiraling downward, the Cavaliers (19-5) rallied and halved their deficit with three runs in the bottom of the third.
Chase Jukes stroked a one-out single, the first hit off the heretofore invincible Sperling.
Courtesy runner Anthony Myers entered in his stead and advanced to second when Javon Lewis walked.
Xavier Shelton followed with a double to center field, scoring both Myers and Lewis. Walton (2-for-4, one run, two RBI) then singled to left sending Shelton home and giving the Cavaliers a glimmer of hope.
It was short-lived, however.
The Islanders’ six-run fourth inning was their undoing.
Nolan Riley and Lucas Hatok led off with walks, Logan Keesee’s single loaded the bases, and Sperling’s double to right scored Riley and Hatok.
Kaden Hurd then walked loaded the bases once again. Dominic Galacgac (3-for-4, three runs, three RBI) followed with a sharp, too-hot-to-handle, infield single to score Keesee and Rylan Phillips, Sperling’s courtesy runner.
A single by Lucas Power (4-for-4, one run, one RBI) scored Hurd, and Galacgac scored when McAdams was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.
“That (KW’s three-run third) was a wakeup call for us,” McAdams said. “When we got the big lead, we coasted. We definitely woke up and put up a big inning.”
While the Islanders were building a 12-3 lead with their bats and ability to string hits together to produce runs, Sperling, save for the Cavaliers’ third inning outburst, allowed them little of consequence.
The 6-2 senior righthander pitched six innings, allowed four runs on five hits, struck out seven, and walked two. He threw 63 of his 101 pitches for strikes.
“Jesus is awesome,” Sperling said. “Jesus really helped me out today. That was my whole mentality. I just put my trust in Him and in my teammates the whole way through.”
That said…
“Curve ball was struggling early, but we figured it out later on,” he added. “Fastball was hot and heavy the whole day.”
In the KW sixth, Dallas Thompson singled with one out. Pinch runner Julius Schools replaced him, stole second, and scored on Chace LeBaron’s double to left.
The Cavs added three runs in the bottom of the seventh, but they were too few, too late.
Walton’s double to left scored Lewis, who reached first after being hit by a pitch and advanced to second on Shelton’s single. Shelton and Walton then scored on errors before reliever Brody Bunting ended the rally and game with two strikeouts.
“We’ve been blessed to have good kids who buy into the system,” said Poquoson coach Craig Zimmerman, whose squad hosts Region 2B runner-up Central Woodstock in the state quarterfinals Tuesday. “They come to compete every day. We’ve been a lot of close ball games this year, and that preparation has helped us for now: the postseason.”
