Conventional wisdom says the odds are not in Pueblo County’s favor when it comes to claiming the Class 4A baseball championship on Saturday at the Air Force Academy.
But the Hornets don’t want to hear about odds. They’re more interested in results.
They grabbed a 3-0 win over Golden then turned right around to beat Falcon 5-3 to set up a showdown with Holy Family at Erdle Field on Saturday.
County will have to win twice while Holy Family needs just one win to claim a championship. But after winning twice on Friday, there’s no reason to believe the Hornets can’t do it.
They were patient against Demons pitcher Sawyer Brinkman, amassing just four hits through the course of the game. Donovan Walsh broke the scoreless tie with a 2-RBI double in the top of the sixth. Pitcher Roy Higinbotham helped his own cause by driving in Walsh to make it 3-0, a score which held up as the final.
Riding that momentum, the Hornets jumped out to a 2-0 lead over Falcon in the bottom of the second on a Luke Rohrer double. The Hornets added another run in the third then got out of reach of the Falcons with two more runs in the bottom of the fifth.
It was a bit of a revenge game as Falcon beat Pueblo County 5-4 last weekend in each team’s first game of the 2024 state tournament.
This is the first time in program history that the Hornets have a shot at the state championship. District rival Pueblo West has three runner-up finishes at state and one state championship that they claimed in 2019, beating Silver Creek 8-6 at the old Sky Sox Stadium in Colorado Springs.
To get that first state championship, the Hornets will have to beat a talented Holy Family team twice. The Tigers are in the state title game for the first time since 2021 when they lost to Ponderosa. The Tigers won three 3A titles in a span of five years from 2010-14 but have yet to claim a championship since moving up to 4A.
The first state title game will begin at 10 a.m. at Erdle Field with the second game – if necessary – scheduled for 12:30 p.m.
