BELFAST — As the Genesee Valley/Belfast baseball team spilled onto the field in celebration, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” began blasting from the ballpark’s speakers. To Dennie Miles, the long-time, legendary coach now at GVBC, the hit song encapsulated the moment.
His GVBC squad, on the heels of a stellar regular season, had withstood a valiant effort from county rival Bolivar-Richburg. It had survived dreadful late-May weather — a 46-degree day with a smattering of wind and rain. And with an opportunity to win in its final at-bats, the fourth-year co-op went out and seized it.
Mason Thomas, the No. 9 hitter, opened the bottom of the seventh with a single to centerfield. He then made a great baserunning play, advancing all the way to third on a ground ball out to second base. From there, “we were definitely going (on a ball put in play),” Miles later recounted. “We figured we gotta try to make something happen.”
And GVBC did.
Ian MacKenzie hit a sharp ground ball to shortstop. Thomas charged home with the game-winning run, sliding ahead of any real clean play at the plate. And when it was over, as the music enveloped the Rich Sullivan Athletics Complex, GV/Belfast had secured a thrilling 4-3 win in a Section 5 Class C2 quarterfinal on Saturday afternoon.
Good times, indeed, had never felt so good.
“How fitting when that song came on?” Miles said. “It doesn’t get any better than this. Oh, my god. I don’t think (the DJ) planned it; that was just the song that came up in the rotation. But it was perfect. (A lot of our) kids have never experienced these kinds of things before.”
He then acknowledged: “We may have stolen victory from the jaws of defeat right there.”
THE TEAMS’ third meeting of the spring — a playoff rubber match — was mostly a pitchers’ duel.
Ethan Davenport was strong for No. 2 GV/B, striking out eight with four walks while surrendering just two earned runs on six hits in a complete-game effort. Landon Barkley, the B-R ace, essentially matched that effort, fanning six with no walks and allowing four runs on seven hits while also going the distance.
And it’s one the seventh-seeded Wolverines almost managed to snatch.
B-R answered deficits of 1-0 and 3-1 to make it 3-3 in the fifth and threatened for more in both the fifth and sixth innings. But GV/B remained resilient.
In the fifth, GVBC coaxed a strikeout and a groundout to escape having runners at second and third with one out. In the sixth, it wriggled out of a bases loaded, one-out jam when third baseman Matt Cater turned a massive double play, stepping on third and throwing to first, where Ryan Daciw made a great stretch for the out.
“Those plays right there kind of kept us in the ball game,” Miles said.
And they ultimately allowed GVBC to knock out the defending Class C2 champion.
GV/B will meet No. 3 Gananda in next week’s semifinals for the right to play in its second-straight sectional championship game. Shorthanded B-R, meanwhile, had its bid dashed for a sixth sectional crown in seven years.
In a well-played game, however, B-R made its rivals earn it.
“You gotta hand it to B-R,” Miles said. “I mean, they’ve lost so much talent from last year to this year. Not only kids that graduated, but two of their key players got injured and aren’t even playing. And I use the saying all the time, you never count the champion out until the champion’s out.
“We knew they had a stud on the mound, and Barkley lived up to the hype. He pitched a whale of a game. He has that presence on the mound that you want to see out of a pitcher. Ethan’s arm was tight right from the word go, but he gutted it out, got us to the seventh and gave us a chance to win it.”
DACIW RECORDED an RBI single in the first and Davenport helped his own cause with a two-run single to make it a 3-1 in the fourth. Thomas finished with two hits and two runs scored, with Miles noting of his heads-up, seventh-inning baserunning: “He’s only a sophomore. He’s got a lot of potential. Going to third (where B-R just missed making it a close play) was a judgment call on his part and he took it.”
James Day doubled while he and Mason Baldwin both had two hits for the Wolverines (12-9). Maddox Davison logged an RBI single in the third and Ryan Iantorno posted an RBI single in the fifth, where B-R also scored on a wild pitch.
“We put the ball in Landon’s hands and he gave us a shot,” B-R coach Dustin Allen said. “We’re not making any excuses or anything, because (GVBC) is a great ballclub, and they deserved to win and move on.
“But what we accomplished this year was pretty incredible with what we lost last year; losing two huge seniors earlier in the year (for the season) and just bringing up JV kids. And they stepped up, they’ve been receptive to everything that we’re doing. … We were able to hang tough with an excellent team.”
GVBC, too, persevered with five sophomore starters “that haven’t been put in this position before” and a junior pitcher who was on the JV team last year. Its reward is a second-straight trip to the sectional semifinals.
“Ethan, as good as he is, has never pitched in big games before,” Miles said. “He showed a lot out there and hopefully he can mature and move forward from it. (But) I was pretty pleased. Our kids hung in there pretty tight.
“It was just a good, tough ball game.”
