Grafton entered postseason below .500 as a No. 8 seed. Now, the Clippers are Class 4 Region A champions.
Grafton High baseball coach Robbie Hiser woke up Thursday to a Facebook memory reminding him that the Clippers won a region title his senior season, exactly 10 years ago to the day.
That was mostly expected because the 2012 Clippers are reckoned the greatest team in school history. Still, the memory conjured the bitter aftertaste of the Clippers’ stumble in the state semifinals that year.
Any reminder of Grafton’s 7-0 win over Warhill in the Class 4 Region A championship game Thursday will likely always be sweet for Hiser because “no one thought we had a chance to be here.”
Indeed, just nine days earlier, the Clippers fell to Warhill 8-2 for their sixth loss in seven games and entered the postseason 7-11 and as the No. 8 seed. With their four-game march through the region, the Clippers (11-11) get to host Region B runner-up Monacan on Tuesday in the state quarterfinals.
Warhill, which will play at Region B champion Hanover on Tuesday, made a remarkable three-game run of its own from the No. 10 seed to reach the championship game, but used up its best pitching arms doing so. The Lions (9-14) got a good performance against Grafton from little-used Griffin Wahl, who surrendered only three hits — two of them bunt singles — and trailed just 3-0 after five innings.
But the usually solid Warhill defense did him no favors, committing four errors, and its offense could not touch Grafton sophomore David Smith. Smith allowed only two hits and two walks in five innings on the heels of his game-saving two-inning stint in the 10-inning quarterfinal win over No. 1 seed Great Bridge.
“I was a little nervous at the beginning, but after a couple of innings I felt pretty good and I wasn’t nervous anymore,” said Smith, who was relieved in the sixth by Blaine Griffin, who pitched two scoreless innings. “This is probably the most I’ve felt in control [on the mound] the whole season, so it was amazing.”
Hiser said his pitchers’ improved control has been important during the winning streak and that the total of two walks allowed is becoming more typical than the seven or eight the opposition were getting during the regular season. He said the defense has heated up as well, and third baseman Griffin, shortstop Brady Norris and second baseman Charlie Daszkowski all made good plays Thursday.
The Clippers threatened throughout and manufactured their first three runs, but were held mostly in check by three double plays started by Lions shortstop Daniel Guntherberg, a slick-fielding freshman. Their breakthrough came in the seventh when Daszkowski and freshman Colton Sandiford — the Clippers’ leading hitter all season — had two-run doubles to increase the lead to 7-0.
“I knew I had to get the job done there, and it worked out in the end,” Sandiford said. “It’s kind of mind-boggling when you think about how much work we’ve put in, working to be the best, and come out here in the playoffs and shine and do what we do.”
Hiser said that work is exactly why his team has made a run to the state tournament he’ll surely look back on fondly a decade from now.
“They’ve all taken on a ‘get better’ mentality,” he said. “This is a credit to their pride, will and want to win and play for each other.
“I told them they were built for this moment, and when they started playing for each other, instead of their personal statistics, they learned that good things can happen.”