Fayetteville Lions Look to Win Fourth State Baseball Crown

It’s another battle against Abbott.

Last year in the 1A state title game, the Fayetteville baseball team lost a heartbreaker 6-5 to Abbott.

This year, the regional champion Lions will again draw Abbott as their opponent, but this time, it’s one round earlier - in the state semifinals.

These old rivals will face off at 9 a.m. Wednesday with the winner advancing to Thursday’s 9 a.m. state title game back at Dell Diamond.

Neither of these teams took a totally dominant route to their return to the state tournament.

Abbott (16-9-1) graduated six seniors from their team last season and started this year winning just two of their first eight games.

Fayetteville (17-4) had a four game losing streak in the middle of the season as it battled through injuries.

“We had to battle all year long,” said Fayetteville head coach Clint Jaeger. “It was one thing after another. We really didn’t have a full squad until the playoffs.”

Chance Konvicka, Easton Jaeger, Keagan Supak, Lawson Fritsch and Brody Dooley all battled though injuries.

“They showed a lot of heart,” Jaeger said.

But things have slowly come together for the Lions, who are now in the middle of a 12-game win streak.

For the most part the Lions have been winning in blowout fashion during their 7-0 run through the playoffs, but they needed contributions from everyone to get past D’Hanis to clinch the regional title last week in a 9-8 victory.

One of the biggest heroes for the Lions in that game was one of their youngest – sophomore Kole Schmitt, who hurled 3.1 innings of one-run relief and also drove in the game-winning run.

“Kole was keeping guys off balance, he did really, really well,” Jaeger said.

Schmitt now joins a host of arms Jaeger can call on who have experience in big games including Jack Schley (who has pitched the bulk of the innings for the Lions this season), Chance Konvicka (who hurled a complete game in last year’s state semis), and Keagan Supak (who pitched six strong innings in the 2021 state title game).

These Lions are no strangers to the spotlight.

In fact, three players on this year’s team made it to state in four different sports this year.

Sophomore Mason Fenhaus, Junior Lawson Fritsch and senior Keagan Supak were all on the state qualifying Fayetteville cross country, basketball, track and now baseball teams.

“I think our boys made it to state in every sport we do except tennis and golf,” Jaeger said. “They work really hard. All the work they put in to getting bigger, faster and stronger pays off.”

Besides those three mentioned above, lots of other Lions have lots of experience at the state level: Check out all these stats (thanks to the research of Amy Fritsch!)

• Went to state in four sports this school year (Cross Country, Basketball, Track, Baseball) Keagan Supak Lawson Fritsch Mason Fenhaus

• Went to state in three sports this school year Jack Schley (Track, Baseball, Basketball) Kole Schmitt (Baseball, Basketball, Cross Country)

• Went to state in two sports this school year (Baseball, Basketball) Jake Kubala Chance Konvicka Easton Jaeger Brody Dooley Other accomplishments (Overall State Appearances Between All Sports - Baseball, Cross Country, Basketball, Track) Seniors Keagan Supak - 11 all-time State Appearances Jake Kubala - 6 all-time State Appearances Juniors Lawson Fritsch - 8 all-time State Appearances Brody Dooley - 4 all-time State Appearances Easton Jaeger - 3 all-time State Appearances Chance Konvicka - 3 alltime State Appearances Sophomores Jack Schley - 5 all-time State Appearances Kole Schmitt - 5 all-time State Appearances Mason Fenhaus - 6 alltime State Appearances

Remembering

Last Year

Here’s some of our game story from last year’s state title game when Fayetteville and Abbott matched up:

Abbott – again. For the second time in six years the only thing that stood between the Fayetteville Lions baseball team and another state title were those darn Abbott Panthers.

Back in 2017 Abbott beat the Lions 11-7 in an epic state title slugfest. Thursday it was Abbott again taking the gold and Fayetteville silver. And this one may have been even more dramatic than that 2017 championship.

This time, Fayetteville trailed 5-0 going into the fifth inning before the Lions roared back to score five late runs before falling 6-5. The loss snapped what had been a 13game win streak for the Lions.

“It hurts to fall short, especially one run short. We woke up too late,” said Fayetteville senior catcher Logan Fritsch.

Down 6-3 going into their final half inning, Fayetteville brought seven guys to the plate to trim the lead to just one, and had the tying and winning runs on base with one out, before reliever Riley Sustala took the mound and retired the final two batters to clinch the win for Abbott.

“It’s pretty disappointing, but hats off to Abbott. They are a good team,” said Fayetteville head coach Clint Jaeger.

Abbott got to freshman starting pitcher Jack Schley for four runs in the first two-plus innings. But only one of those runs was earned because of a pair of early Lions errors.