PITSBURG – It wasn’t an ideal night for baseball and certainly not the way Mason Conley, Cade McGlinch and Logan Ressler imagined playing on senior night.
With sustained winds at 25 mph and higher for more than two hours and temperatures slowly dropping it would have been easy for the Franklin Monroe Jets to pack it up and call it a night.
Trailing 4-0 heading into the bottom of the fifth inning the Jets took advantage of a pitching change by Preble Shawnee.
Conley got it going taking one in the neck to get on first base. Ressler followed that coaxing a base on balls.
Bryce Filbrun laced a single to center field to load the bases with no outs, and the Jets were in business.
Zach Cable then singled to drive in a run followed by a fielder’s choice by McGlinch for another run.
Levi Altic followed up driving the third run … but Cable was thrown out at third base to end the inning with the Jets trailing 4-3.
Preble Shawnee got two back in the top of the sixth inning to put the pressure back on FM.
Noah Koffer scored in the bottom of the sixth on an RBI from Filbrun as the Jets trailed 6-4 heading into the top of the seventh.
A pitching change was in order and Timothy Lawson took to the hill. Lawson surrendered a walk to the first batter that eventually scored before getting out of the inning as the Jets trailed 7-4 heading into the bottom of the seventh.
Cable opened with a fly out to center field, but McGlinch singled to give FM life.
Lawson worked the count and drew a walk and Trevor Collins followed that with a single to load the bases with just one out.
Koffer rapped a single to score McGlinch to draw to 7-5. Conley added a base hit to score another run, and the Jets trailed 7-6 with the bases still loaded.
Preble Shawnee decided to change pitchers; it didn’t help. Ressler worked the pitcher for a walk to tie the game 7-7, and Filbrun took one for the team getting hit in the chest, sending Koffer in for the winning run and dramatic come-from-behind win, 8-7.
“It wasn’t a great game for us tonight,” Franklin Monroe coach Ed Meyers said. “We had a lot of mental errors that helped give Preble Shawnee a lead early in the game … but we have gotten better as the season progressed in finding way to get on base, scoring runs, and tonight we worked hard to get back into the game.
“I give the kids all the credit in the world. They showed they had a lot of heart. It would have been easy to give up, but we played our kind of baseball over the last couple of innings, and it payed off in the end,” Meyers added.
“Cade McGlinch pitched a good game to keep us in it going six innings with nine strikeouts and just two base on balls,” Meyers said.
“It’s a great feeling for our three seniors who have been chomping at the bit the last couple of years to turn this program around, and they are starting to see some of that hard work pay off. And what a great tribute to Hudson Nestor, who would have been on senior on this team, as we honored his parents tonight. He is always with us in heart and spirit … especially tonight,” Meyers said.
“Our seniors are showing the younger players what they need to do. We have eight juniors on this team, and we are looking solid heading into the tournament,” Meyers concluded.
