Fayetteville’s Baseball Season Ends in Regional Finals

Lions Already Thinking About Next Season

It won’t be a repeat state championship for the Fayetteville Lions this year.

Despite another stellar season on the diamond, the defending 1A champs were eliminated one step from state Friday in the regional finals against D’Hanis.

In this best-of-three series, the Lions lost 11-2 Thursday and 7-4 Friday.

“Our guys played their hearts out but sometimes you just have to tip your hat to the other team,” Fayetteville head coach Clint Jaeger said.

“D’Hanis is a great team,” said Fayetteville catcher Logan Fritsch, who sparked a Lions comeback with a bases-loaded double in the seventh inning Friday, but it was too little too late. “They could put the bat on the ball one through nine.

“This year they wanted revenge. They came out firing and we were flat.”

Last year it was the Lions who had knocked D’Hanis out of the playoffs in this round, but a Cowboys team that boasted seven seniors was too much this season.

“One big thing is they hit the ball better than they had in the past,” Jaeger said. “Maybe our pitching wasn’t on. It wasn’t that we did bad, but maybe we weren’t at our best. But we should have scored more runs too. We had too many strikeouts, didn’t get key runners in, never could get that two-out base hit to get runners in and that’s crucial at this level.”

In Game 1, Reid Gross started on the mound for the Lions and gave up nine runs. Parker Vitek, Chance Konvicka and Jake Kubala pitched in relief.

Keagan Supak had two of the Lions’ four hits. Gross and Cooper Mau had the others. Kubala and Easton Jaeger scored the only runs for the Lions.

D’Hanis broke the game open with a six-run fourth inning.

In Game 2, D’Hanis jumped out to a 5-0 lead after two innings and never looked back.

Supak pitched a complete game for Fayetteville, allowing 10 hits.

Travis Gully had three hits for the Lions, including a triple. Gross hit a double.

Fritsch’s two-out bases loaded double in the top of the seventh drove in three runs and cut the D’Hanis lead to just three runs, but reliever Layton Herrman got a final strikeout to end the game, and D’Hanis was headed to the state tournament.

D’Hanis (26-3) plays Abbott (21-3-2) Wednesday at noon at Dell Diamond in the state semis.

Fayetteville, meanwhile, ends its season with a 18-10-2 record and a regional semifinal title.

“Overall we had a good season,” Fritsch said.

But they wanted more after tasting a state title last year with a very young team.

The Lions don’t have a single senior this year.

“They already said it in the meeting after the game, we’re winning this thing next year,” Jaeger said. “In their mind there’s only one acceptable result and that’s winning state.”