GREELEY – The noise from the dugouts couldn’t have been more contrasting. University had found new life after scoring a walk-off win in the bottom of the 14th inning of the first game of the day.
The Bulldogs were upbeat and the chatter from the dugout was lively.
The silence for Coal Ridge was deafening. But the thing is, there wasn’t worry or panic. The Titans were getting refocused.
They shook off one of the most nerve-racking games in the history of any Colorado state baseball tournament and bounced back to beat University 3-2 in the John Haefeli Class 3A baseball final.
“We still had the upper hand,” Titans coach Dan Larsen said. “They used their two best pitchers in that [14-inning] game and we still had some pitching left in John Luke Houston.”
Houston was the pitcher who called for the ball in last week’s win over the Bulldogs (26-5 overall), but this time he didn’t have to. With a loss now in hand, the Titans (26-3-1) went right back to the formula that worked against this same team on the same field.
He retired the first three batters he saw, then a Wyatt Murray single brought in George Roberts to get the Titans on the board.
Houston helped his own cause in the third. After an RBI triple from Ben Simons made it 2-0, Houston singled to right to bring in Simons, which seemingly had a calming effect on everyone donning a black jersey on a hot day at Butch Butler Field.
“We just had to limit the mistakes with a smaller lead,” Houston said. “I just [went back to the mound] to pound my spot. I knew if I missed, we’d get in trouble.”
The Bulldogs got one back in the fourth as Preston Natividad scored on a Gage Viken single. Viken added another RBI in the sixth as he scored Damian Alvarez from third. Alvarez went 6-for-9 for University between the two games and scored two runs.
He was one of the few Bulldog hitters who figured out Simons in the first game. The Coal Ridge ace went eight innings and struck out 13 hitters while giving up just four hits, one walk and two earned runs.
A championship-level performance went for naught as the Bulldogs finally broke the tie in the 14th. Simons was certainly one of the Coal Ridge players who had to shake off the stunning loss and focus on the task ahead.
“A lot of it was we lost [our momentum] right at the beginning,” Simons said. “We had a quick pep talk about what our goal was and to make sure we were good with it.”
The Titans will take a long bus ride home with a piece of hardware that has never entered New Castle. Coal Ridge has nine team state championships according to the CHSAA database. Eight of them are spirit state championships and there is one girls track and field title.
This is officially the first state championships for a boys team in the history of Coal Ridge High School.
“There has been a weight [with that],” Larsen said. “When I first started at the program, I had a lot of people tell me that we couldn’t win anything with these kids and this community. It drove me for a long period of time.”
And the kids were more than aware of what was at stake with their final long trip of the year. They know this accomplishment will forever live in Coal Ridge athletics history.
“I’ve been talking about it with Logan [Harlow] and Jackson [Slade] for how many years,” Simons said. “It made things difficult with Eaton going for three years. But this year is special with this team.”
(Dan Mohrmann/ColoradoPreps.com)
