LRSC baseball/Photo by Noah Clooten
Lake Region State College’s first-year baseball coach, Laurence Arango, said he knew people would take his team lightly in the playoffs.
The Royals were last in the Mon-Dak Athletic Conference during the regular season, after all. But through the grind of the season, through all the struggles and growing pains, Arango maintained optimism. He conceded that his team hadn’t learned how to be resilient enough yet. But he liked their spirit, and he commended the kids for stucking with it this season.
So when the Royals traveled all the way to Montana for the first round of the playoffs this weekend, they had to know they weren’t the favored team. They were forced to face Miles Community College, which went 23-2 in conference games to finish first in the Mon-Dak.
Yet, they didn’t just roll over. Facing a team that they trailed by 19 games in the standings, they played a back-and-forth Game 1 that they fell just short in, 8-7. That brought them to the second game in the best-of-three series, where they lost 11-1.
Thus ends the LRSC baseball season. And the first year of the Arango era.
But they didn’t go down without a fight.
The first three Royals baserunners reached base, and all three came around to give LRSC an early 3-0 lead in Game 1. A sacrifice fly and two bases-loaded free passes were responsible for the RBIs.
Simon Beach got the start on the hill. The Pioneers struck back for two in the bottom of the first, with a run-scoring double and a sacrifice fly.
It remained 3-2 Royals until the fourth, when the teams matched run totals for each of the next three innings. Both teams scored one in the fourth, one in the fifth and two in the sixth. Kaeden Siwak hit a solo shot, and Hunter Brodina and Ronald Nelson knocked two-out singles to collectively bring in three runs.
Beach’s day ended after five innings pitched. He allowed six runs (four earned) on six hits and one walk while striking out three.
Brodina took over for him in the sixth. Two runs had already come in to cut LRSC’s lead to 7-6.
He quieted the inning there, but immediately fell into trouble in the seventh. The first eight pitches he threw were balls, and a single loaded the bases with nobody out.
Brodina managed to work his way out of it. He induced a pair of popups, then ended the inning on a groundout. At the time, it was a massive escape for the Royals.
But these playoff games were nine innings long, rather than the seven that the Royals are accustomed to playing. Nelson took over for Brodina with one out in the eighth, and LRSC went on to surrender two unearned runs in the frame. Nelson made an error on a bunt, and the go-ahead run came home on an error.
Just like that, for the first time all day, the Royals were losing.
Brodina briefly kept the game alive by reaching on an error, but LRSC otherwise had no response in the ninth.
After Nelson threw the Royals’ final 13 pitches of Game 1, they went back to him to start the nightcap with their season on the line. But Game 2 wasn’t nearly as close.
It was 1-1 in the top of the second; the Pioneers scored first on a passed ball, and the Royals tied it on a sacrifice fly by Jacob Warnke after three consecutive free passes.
A pair of two-out hits put MCC back ahead, 3-1, in the bottom of the second.
LRSC stayed in the game until the fifth, when the wheels fell off with an eight-run inning. The first seven batters reached between Nelson and reliever Jacob Ripplinger. The game ended by mercy rule with still only one out in the inning, as the gap widened to 10 runs.
That brings a finish to the LRSC baseball season, and the 2023-24 junior college sports campaign as a whole, for that matter. It’ll return during the late summer with women’s volleyball.
