2A baseball: Gillespie's perfect season comes to a close
Gillespie’s perfect season came to an imperfect end.
The Miners committed five errors and Quincy Notre Dame scored three unearned runs to win the Class 2A Pleasant Plains Sectional title 5-0 at Lincoln Land Community College’s Claude Kracik Field on Saturday.
QND (34-1) will face Bloomington Central Catholic (17-10) in the Lincoln Land Supersectional on Monday at 5 p.m. Central Catholic beat Eureka (30-3) 3-2 to win the Decatur Sectional on Saturday.
In the top of the second, QND leadoff hitter Jake Schisler singled to left field with bases loaded and two outs to drive in two runs. That was all the run support he needed as Schisler struck out eight and earned the complete-game shutout.
“We could’ve done everything a little bit better, honestly,” Gillespie senior Kamryn Link said. “I could’ve (pitched) better, we could’ve had better at-bats; everyone could’ve done something better throughout the course of the game but that’s just how baseball goes. (QND) is a great team, they play hard, they know how to play the game the right way."
The Miners scattered five hits against Schisler and Gillespie coach Jeremy Smith said it wasn’t the lack of hits overall, but of timely hits.
“I felt like we just needed one big hit just to push a run across, just to give us a little bit of confidence: ‘Hey, let’s go, we can get a run here and there’ and we never got that big hit,” Smith said. “That was frustrating but it is a game of inches.”
Gillespie loaded the bases in the bottom of the second with one out but Schisler struck out Colton Bultema and got Chase Helvey to ground into an inning-ending fielder’s choice.
The Miners left eight runners on base.
Link struck out five but was forced from the game in the sixth after QND loaded the bases after Gillespie’s Tristen Wargo committed a two-out error at shortstop. Tucker Tollerton singled to left to drive in a pair of runs to give QND a 4-0 lead. The Raiders pushed across another unearned run in the top of the seventh.
Link struck out 85 and walked 22 in 61 innings pitched before Saturday and had hit just five batters all season. But he walked three and hit three more against QND.
“It just didn’t seem like (Link) had a feel for it,” Smith said. “His curveball was a little bit sporadic and when you let a team like that sit dead-red on a fastball, it’s tough to win.
“We’ve been trying to work all these (opposing hitters) backwards — early in the count, curveballs, breaking pitches — trying to keep them off-balance and then finish them off with a fastball. When you don’t have that and you fall behind 2-1, 3-1, it’s tough to get out of it.”
On Wednesday, the Miners won a sectional semifinal game for the first time since 2002 to end a 21-year drought. Despite the loss in the next game, Smith knows the players will remember this season for a long time to come.
“I knew we were good, we were going to be tough and win a lot of ballgames but I never expected 32-0 — I never expect to get to 30 wins in general,” Smith said. “To be 32-0, it’s going to be something these guys talk about when they’re sitting around drinking a beer when they’re my age.
“It was fun, it was a good ride, it was a good group of guys.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Never easy: Gillespie loses bid for perfect season in loss to QND
