Baseball: Liberty Union secures elusive district title

LANCASTER – Last season, Liberty Union's season ended in the district title game in heartbreaking fashion.

The Lions were two outs away from a Division III district championship before some late-inning magic from Marion Elgin gave the Lions a 5-4 loss in 10 innings.

On Friday, No. 8 seed Liberty Union once again advanced to the district title game, but this time they left with the elusive district championship trophy, defeating the No. 5 seed Bishop Hartley 6-4 at Beavers Field. It is the Lions' first district title in 21 years.

"Our goal all year… was to get those final two outs and push ourselves to that point," Liberty Union coach Mike Schmidt said after the game.

The Lions now advance to the regional semifinal, where they will play the winner of Genoa Area and Millbury Lake on May 28 at Ed Sandy Field in Elida.

Liberty Union's had it going from the start, scoring five of its six runs in the first three innings of the game. Luke Bressler was the first to come through with a successful suicide squeeze to score David Smith just four batters into the game to take a 1-0 lead.

In the second inning, the Lions had an RBI double to right field from Travis Turley and an RBI single from Smith to push their lead to 3-0. Both players finished with a team-high two hits each.

From that point on, Liberty Union took advantage of fielding mistakes by Bishop Hartley (16-12), as the Hawks accumulated four errors from the third inning on, including a throwing error by third baseman Cameron Macioce that allowed two runs to score to give the Lions a 5-0 lead.

A failed pick-off attempt at third base by Hartley catcher Sean Gilmore allowed Adam Snyder to score to give the Lions its sixth and final run.

On the mound, Liberty Union got a strong start from Smith, who gave up just one run over six innings.

Smith did start off shaky in the bottom of the first inning, however, as he gave up a walk, hit a batter, and a bunt single to load the bases. Though he did eventually find his groove, coming back to strike out the side to strand the bases loaded.

"I just had pregame jitters," Smith said. "It's a district [title] game, so you're a little nervous at first but you have to persevere and I found my groove and it just started working."

From that point on, Smith was on a roll, not allowing another hit until the fifth inning. He finished the game with five strikeouts and just two hits allowed.

Smith said getting out of that first inning unscathed gave him a tremendous amount of confidence for the rest of the game.

"Oh man, it was unbelievable," he said. "I felt like I was invincible for a minute."

Hartley did not go down without a fight, however. In the seventh inning, the Hawks collected three hits in the inning, highlighted by a two-out, three-run home run from Austin Rawlins to cut the lead to 6-4.

"(Rawlins) is a big, strong kid, and boy he showed what he could do with a mistake," Schmidt said. "Fortunately we had two out and still had two runs to give at that point."