Class 1A state baseball: Capitalizing on opportunities, Marquette tops Routt

PEORIA – When a team admittedly is not at its best against formidable competition, it’s imperative that same team must make the most of every opportunity and every motivation presented to it to stay alive, to move on, to win. That is how championships are won.

This year’s Marquette Crusaders are no strangers to doing the fighting, the clawing and the drawing of emotional inspiration to find victory, and they proved it again Friday with their 9-3 Class 1A state semifinal victory over Jacksonville Routt at Peoria’s Dozer Park.

The Crusaders overcame the news that the mother of assistant Steve “Pizza” Scherer had died the day before.

They overcame that starting pitcher Alec Novotney was ill and, while solid, not nearly as dominant as he’d been the last month of this season, including back-to-back shutouts this postseason.

They overcame managing only five hits, two of them by freshman Griffin Dobberstein.

They overcame a Routt team that had more wins and was riding an 11-game win streak.

The Cru overcame all those things by making the most of two hits, three Routt errors, four walks and a hit batsmen to score eight runs in the bottom of the second inning – plus some solid relief pitching from Anthony Couch – to give them the win and a berth in the state championship game against Altamont.

The Indians (31-9) defeated Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley 3-2 with a run on a throwing error in the last of the seventh inning.

“It’s so hard to get down here, and when you do, you never know how the kids are going to react, how you’re going to react,” Marquette coach Todd Hopkins said. “These guys learned from the group before them. That was an awesome team. It had been through it, and they knew how to handle themselves. It’s so tough to relay that to them, and half the time they think you’re full of it, but they listen and try to do what we tell them. They believe it a little more now that they’ve seen the results.

“Getting that run in the first was big, but we needed more and then we had the big inning … Al pitched well. He’s been sick, but he gutted it out and then Anthony came in. The way things went, we didn’t need him so we kept him fresh with bullpens, but in the state semi when we needed him, he took the ball and said ‘Let’s go’ … I’m just proud of them.”

Dobberstein gave MA the lead in the home first. With two out, Sam Mitre singled and Keaton Davis followed with a two-base hit, putting runners on second and third. Dobberstein then slapped a soft single to drive in the run.

But Turner and the defense’s generosity with base runners really got Routt in trouble the next inning.

Jaxsen Higgins led off grounding to short for a bobbling error, and Grant Dose hit it there again, leading to a throw to first base too late. Turner walked Novotney to fill the bases, then walked Carson Zellers and Mitre to force in a run each.

His wildness continued with wild pitches scoring Novotney and Zellers, followed by a walk to Davis before Dobberstein came through again with an RBI single to right-center.

Davis crossed home on the third Routt error of the inning, and Dose drove in Couch, who had been hit by a pitch, with only the second MA hit of the eight-run inning.

Routt had only three hits through four innings but finally broke through against the tiring Novotney in the fifth. Daulton Brown and Nolan Turner started it with singles to right, then one out later, Conrad Charpentier drew a bases-loading walk. Brady Turner followed with a two-run single and Eli Olson later added a run-scoring sacrifice fly.

Those were the first earned runs allowed by Novotney and Saturday’s starter Carson Zellers in 38 postseason innings.

Couch, who hadn’t pitched since May 10 vs. Dwight, got through the sixth thanks to an inning-ending diving catch by center fielder Dose, who then recorded the first out in the seventh the same way.

Two walks and a two-out infield hit loaded the bases before Mitre gobbled up Talon Thompson’s foul pop-up behind first to end the threat and the game.

“This game can be really simple and really difficult all at the same time, as you saw in our second inning there,” Routt coach Ryan Turner said. “We have not had many innings like that in our season, and it was just one of those things. We made some uncharacteristic errors, we were wild, we had a broken mitt lead to a passed ball and a run scored, we had a cross up from our pitcher cost us a run. We just ran into a streak of bad luck, it felt like.

“But I’m really proud of our guys and they way they fought back. ... We were just a little short today.”