Haxtun completes historic run to 1A baseball championship

LAKEWOOD – Baseball weather be damned. The balls were slick, the turf was slippery and there was nothing about the conditions at All-Star Park that were ideal.

But Haxtun and Flatirons Academy wanted that Class 1A baseball championship and they were willing to battle the elements as much as they wanted to battle each other.

A 10-run fourth inning made all the difference, however as the Fightin’ Bulldogs took control of the game and never looked back. They ran away with a 19-7 win to capture the first baseball championship in program history.

“We’ve been talking about this since Day 1,” coach Trenton Ham said. “We’ve had this in the back of our minds every single day and every single practice.”

And it looked like they were thinking about it in the very first inning as they put two runs on the board to take an early lead. Kaiden Schelling ripped a triple to right-center and scored on a throwing error by Flatirons Academy catcher Noah Evans.

Keegan Colglazier walked and was driven in on a ground out by Jerron Turney.

Evans made up for the throwing error by hitting a 2-RBI double in the Bison (15-6-1 overall) half of the first and he would later score to put his team up 3-2.

That was very much the flow of the game early. Schelling hit his second triple of the day in the top of the 3rd, driving home two runs in the process to regain the lead for the Bulldogs (23-2).

“That really got us started,” Schelling said. “Something big like that can really swing momentum in games like this and then we took off from there.”

That taking off happened in the top of the 4th. The first three batters of the inning reached base and eventually scored before Ryland Wolff struck out for the first out of the inning. The next out wouldn’t come for quite some time. The next seven hitters in the lineup all reached base and all scored to give the Bulldogs a 15-6 lead.

No one was happier than starting Colin Cone. As the lead continued to stretch out, he grew more confident and that was all from watching things develop and not throwing a single pitch.

“We have so much pitching depth,” he said. “We have so many people we can put into a game and feel confident about it. Burning our two best guys [in the semifinal] wasn’t idea but we weren’t too worried about it.”

A heavy dose of rain fell on the game for about an hour and although the conditions struggled to improve, Cone never looked at each inning on the mound as anything other than an opportunity to battle.

“You just have to compete,” he said.

Offensively, Cone also pulled his weight, going 1-for-2 with 2 RBIs in the win. Schelling led the Bulldogs with 4 RBIs on the game and the team totaled 14. They worked more station-to-station as they totaled just five extra-base hits on their way to a championship.

“They made it easy to coach today,” Ham said. “It was a lot of fun and the boys just came to play.”

They didn’t just play. For the first time in school history they played the game of baseball at a state championship level.