Baseball | Beachwood upsets Triway in muddy sectional final

WOOSTER TWP. — Mud and baseball usually don't mix, for obvious reasons.

But they did Wednesday night in the Div. II North Ridgeville sectional final, as Triway and Beachwood played through a steady rain, much to chagrin of anyone responsible for laundry afterward.

It proved to be a bad combination for the Titans, who saw their postseason hopes slip away in a 7-2 loss on a night when nothing seemed to go right.

"I think they had two earned runs, and you can't do that in the playoffs," Triway coach Justin McDowell said. "That's what killed us. We couldn't make plays when we needed to make plays. We couldn't get the big hit when we needed the big hit."

No. 14 Beachwood took advantage of No. 6 Triway's mistakes and used aggression on the basepaths to build a lead the Titans couldn't cut into until it was too late.

In all, Triway committed seven errors, allowing just two earned runs, as they walked off the field wondering what could have been. Playing in less-than-ideal conditions likely didn't help, but Beachwood was able to limit its mistakes and take extra bases to put the pressure on the host Titans, scoring two runs in the second, third and fourth innings to go up 6-0.

"Our aggression was insane," Beachwood's Brett Zawatsky said. "I've never seen us do anything like that."

A gusty performance by Zawatsky helped too. Despite losing his footing on several occasions because of the mud, he did his job in making sure the Titans didn't generate runs, allowing none of them over 5⅔ innings, despite giving up seven hits and four walks.

"It was difficult to overcome, but I was able to try to come back and get those strikes in," Zawatsky said. "I was slipping all over the place. My back foot wasn't even staying down. There was mud sticking onto the cleats. It was bad."

After all that was done on the mound, Zawatsky came in at catcher for the Bison as Brenden Malek closed out the game.

Triway didn't have an issue getting players on base during the loss, compiling nine hits and five walks, along with having three more players getting hit by a pitch. The Titans left the bases loaded in the fifth and sixth innings when they desperately needed to start a rally.

By the time they were able to get a few runs across the plate in the seventh — with Chad Harper scoring on a throwing error and Cyrus Roth crossing the plate on a passed ball — it was too tall of a task to make a full comeback.

While Triway got players on base, too many times it happened with one or two outs in the inning, making it harder to score via anything but a base hit.

"It limits some of the things you can do," McDowell said. "It limits the aggression a little bit. We had guys on. ... It seemed like we just couldn't get the big hit today. Unfortunately that's been the case in a lot of our losses."

Even in a losing effort, Triway's five seniors — Griffin Braun, Carter Schmid, Brock Tisko, Kain Weaver and Roth — made sure they didn't go down without a fight. Seven of Triway's nine hits came from that group, with Braun and Schmid each accounting for two. Tisko, Braun, Weaver and Schmid made up the Titans' top four spots in the lineup Wednesday, leaving a huge hole for the Titans to fill going forward.

That senior group has meant so much to the Triway program over the past four years, bridging the transition from late coach Sean Carmichael to McDowell.

"You have Brock, who busted his butt to come back from an ACL surgery at the end of football (season)," McDowell said. "You have Kain, who has gotten better every single year. You have Carter, who has taken off as a baseball player this year. You have Griffin — my goodness, Griffin was batting .100 as a freshman and he's batting close to .400 as a senior.

"And Cyrus got a hit there at the end. Cyrus has been the consummate teammate. He cares about everybody. He never once complained. A lot of kids complain if they don't get a lot of playing time, and he never did."

This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Baseball: Triway falls in sectional final to Beachwood