By: Dustin Kent - JCFloridan.com
After a terrific season that included 36 wins and a Panhandle Conference championship, the Chipola Indians' postseason stay was a short one, going 0-2 at the FCSAA State Baseball Tournament in Lakeland over the weekend.
Chipola came in as the top seed out of the Panhandle Conference but lost its opening game to Central Florida 7-3 thanks to a four-run ninth inning by the Patriots.
That loss came at the expense of the Indians' No. 1 starter Taylor Lewis, with No. 2 starter Michael Mader taken out of the tourney by a rain delay Saturday night.
The Indians' scheduled second round game against the Tallahassee Eagles lasted just one inning before weather forced a Sunday restart, with the Eagles taking a 1-0 lead thanks to a two-out error that led to an RBI single by Quincy Nieporte.
When the game resumed Sunday morning, both Mader and TCC starter Victor Cole were replaced by Tom Watson for the Indians and Shaun Herbert for the Eagles.
Herbert pitched the next 4 1/3 innings to get the win, giving up one earned run in the sixth inning while allowing four hits and three walks with three strikeouts.
Watson lasted until the fourth inning when he was relieved by Adonis Hernandez after walking the bases loaded with one out.
After Hernandez got a big strikeout of Matt Olive for the second out, Jonathan Burkett delivered with an RBI single through the middle to score DJ McKnight to make it 2-0 Eagles.
Chipola finally got on board in the sixth with Kevin Santa walked and scored on an RBI single by Josh Merrigan that forced TCC to go to the bullpen and bring in Collin Strall to replace Herbert.
TCC got out of the inning when Merrigan was thrown out trying to steal second and Strall got Chase Scott to ground back to the mound to end the inning.
The Indians had another golden opportunity to tie or take the lead courtesy of a one-out triple by Kyle in the top of the seventh inning, but Strall came up with a big strikeout of Jacky Miles, Jr. for the second out, and then got Cody Lanford to ground out to shortstop to end the threat.
Santa drew a lead-off walk in the eighth inning, but that also proved fruitless, with Strall striking out Danny Mars looking and inducing a 6-4-3 double play ball to preserve the lead.
Strall sat Chipola down in order in the ninth inning, striking out Bert Givens to end the game.
Strall finished with 3 1/3 scoreless innings to earn the save, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out three.
Hernandez went four scoreless innings for Chipola, giving up four hits and striking out three.
McKnight had two of Tallahassee's nine team hits, with Burkett and Nieporte each picking up a hit and an RBI.
Merrigan, Lanford, Santa, Moore, and Miles, Jr. had the only five hits of the game for Chipola.
"It's disappointing," Chipola coach Jeff Johnson said of his team's quick exit from the tournament. "This is a great group of kids. I really like this group. We got kind of banged up a little bit down the stretch, but in a nutshell, you've got to play well when you get down here and catch a break or two and we didn't do either of those things.
"Overall, we had a pretty good year and won a lot of games. But we measure our seasons by the championships we win and we fell short of that this year."