By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
BATAVIA – When the season began, senior Dylan Dumont came up with would become the mantra for the Webster Schroeder Warriors baseball team.
Life Goes On.
“I was listening to a song and heard that and decided that was us,” Dumont said. “Last year we played a little tense. We expected perfection.”
This year Dumont wanted the mindset to be different. After all, no one is perfect in baseball. So don’t let that strikeout eat at you. Forget about that error because the ball is going to be hit your way again very soon. That loss? We’ll recover.
And so, throughout a spring of win one, lose two, win two, lose one for the Warriors, Life Goes On became the rallying cry.
And after Friday night’s thrilling extra-inning 3-1 victory over the Hilton Cadets in the Section V Class AA1 championship game, the season goes on for Schroeder.
Trailing 1-0 in the top of the seventh and down to their final two outs, freshman catcher Brady Sayers boomed a run-scoring, one-out double the corner in right field to tie the score, then in the ninth Sayers drew a bases-loaded walk before Danny Hilfiker bunted home an insurance run on the suicide squeeze.
The late-game offensive heroics backed the marvelous work on the mound by Dumont. He pitched eight innings, allowing an unearned run in the first while scattering five hits and striking out 11 to earn game MVP honors.
“There’s not a better player, not a better horse, not a better kid,” Schroeder coach Mat Sanfilippo said after the Warriors improved to 11-11 and won their first sectional title since 2016.
Being .500 isn’t exactly a storybook season but it’s turning out to be quite the dream of a postseason.
Seeded fifth heading into the sectional playoffs, the Warriors have been a pitching juggernaut. They have allowed just one run in 23 innings over three games, shutting out Greece Olympia/Odyssey 4-0 in the quarterfinals and Webster Thomas 2-0 in the semifinals.
Friday’s masterpiece by Dumont, capped by a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth by reliever Nolan Russell, means Schroeder will now play Canandaigua at 7 p.m. Monday at ESL Ballpark in the Class AA regional qualifier. Second-seeded Hilton finished 13-9.
“I’m proud of this team,” Cadets coach Kevin Whelehan said. “Early in the season we were sitting about .500 but then we started playing better baseball, the kids started believing.”
It was Schroeder that believed there was a score to settle on Friday night. The Warriors were no-hit by Hilton ace Kallin Whelehan in April and then lost 4-3 to the Cadets in early May.
“For the last week all we were saying was that nobody’s beating us three times,” Sanfilippo said.
For most of Friday night it appeared Hilton would, however, complete the hat trick. The Cadets scored an unearned run in the bottom of the first, then Kallin Whelehan made sure that one run was all they needed right up until the seventh.
But Life Goes On, and so would the game after Sayers delivered the clutch, run-scoring double.
“This guy’s a freshman and he pulled through massively,” Hilfiker said.
Said Sayers: “I had a feeling it was my moment. Previous times when I had a chance in that situation, I wasn’t doing my job. But I just felt it was my time this time.”
It was the one dent on an otherwise brilliant outing by Whelehan in what was a dynamic pitching duel with Dumont. For seven innings they matched one another in painting corners of the plate, keeping batters off balance and snuffing out any attempted uprising before there was even anxiety.
“Those are two of the best guys in Section V right there,” Kevin Whelehan said.
Which is why, for eight innings, the scoreboard resembled the binary code of a computer program.
000 000 10
100 000 00
But it wasn’t all pitching. Both teams flashed leather often. In the top of the first, Hilton third baseman Cameron McCarville lunged to snare a Sam Nick line drive for the third out. In the bottom half of the inning, Schroeder right fielder Elliot Johnson gunned down Jarred Wade at third to prevent more damage.
In the bottom of the third, Warriors center fielder Lucas Mazzorana made a diving catch to rob Jarred Wade of a hit. Hilton’s Lucas Barry returned the favor in left field in the fourth inning by taking a hit away from Dumont.
Then in the top of the seventh, with pinch-runner Callen Rickard racing home, Wade, the Cadets right fielder, and second baseman Jack Lander combined to throw out Sayers at third. While the tying run scored, the bases were now empty.
But the big plays on defense continued. After Lander started the bottom of the seventh with an infield single, Dumont made sure there would be no scoring threat by pouncing off the mound and diving to catch Whelehan’s sacrifice bunt attempt. He then easily turned the double play by flipping to first.
Extra innings, anyone? Why not. More gold glove defense? Why, of course.
Schroeder’s Eli Stockmaster drew a walk to start the top of the eighth. Leadoff hitter Ryan LaRocco bunted him to second but Stockmaster’s attempt to race all the way to third was foiled when Hilton first baseman Michael Keller fired a strike to McCarville at third to nail him.
But Schroeder finally broke through in the ninth. Nick led off with a single, Dumont walked and, after a sacrifice bunt by Johnson, Max Caron walked to load the bases. Sayers then walked to forced home the go-ahead run before Hilfiker provided insurance with the squeeze bunt.
“Flip (coach Sanfilippo) gave me the suicide sign at first and I didn’t get the bunt down,” Hilfiker said. “But he had faith in me that I could execute and gave me the sign again.
“I said, ‘All right, I’ve got a second chance,’ and you don’t get too many second chances.”
He made good this time, and Russell then slammed the door in the bottom of the inning by fanning two of the three batters he faced.
Life Goes On. And now the season goes on.
Great writing. Thank you.