FORTVILLE — With ice water dripping from his freshly doused jersey, Mt. Vernon head coach Brad King issued a cold, hard point after his Marauders eliminated state-ranked Cathedral, 6-3, Saturday night to win their first regional title in 50 years.
There will always be doubters, the veteran baseball manager emphasized following his team’s Class 4A Regional 3 title game victory, but if his underdog Marauders know anything, it’s how to block out the noise.
Consecutive shutout wins against Muncie Central, 19-0, during the Sectional 9 tournament semifinals and Hoosier Heritage Conference rival Pendleton Heights, 8-0, in the finals consequently amplified the chatter.
A pair of comeback wins over formidable Franklin Central, 6-2, during the Plainfield Regional semifinals and seventh-ranked Cathedral in the championship final should have muted the naysayers.
Not that the Marauders are listening. They’re too busy prepping for the program’s first-ever, IHSAA state tournament final four appearance.
“People said, ‘Well, you walked through the sectional.’ Well, you know, Pendleton Heights is a good program. Coming through, and again, it was, ‘well, you have Franklin Central.’ Well, Franklin Central in their last 10 games, they’ve been playing pretty well,” King said.
“And then, Cathedral. It doesn’t get any better than that. Yeah, we’re getting some breaks along the way, but we’re also putting ourselves in a position to have success with those breaks.”
Persistence and team chemistry have bred success for the blue-collar Marauders (26-6), who enter today’s 4A southern semistate championship against host Jasper (29-2) at Alvin C. Ruxer Baseball Field riding an 11-game winning streak.
In program history, the farthest the Marauders have ever gone in the baseball state tournament was the Bloomington South Semistate title game in 1971 before losing to Columbus, 1-0, one step away from the state finals’ final four.
The Marauders last won a regional game in 1972, a 49-year drought the 2021 team ended this past weekend before erasing five decades of frustration in the same day.
“For us to be in the top four, even at the beginning of the season, I never expected that to happen,” Mt. Vernon senior Hunter Dobbins said. “I never expected us to win regional until we played Greenfield-Central (in the HHC race) and I saw how we played. We competed and never let up. Even if we’re losing, we always come back. A lot of teams get down. A lot of teams get quieter, don’t get as hyped. When we’re losing, we get more hyped, more focused.”
The Marauders’ regular-season, down-to-the-wire duel with rival Greenfield-Central for their first outright HHC championship revealed the team’s fortitude, Dobbins, an IHSBCA South All-Star, underscored.
In reality, the Marauders’ entire 2021 regular-season campaign was actually a training ground for their historic playoff run.
With a single-season record 26 wins to their credit, the Marauders have won 14 of them in come-from-behind fashion, including both regional games.
Of their 26 victories overall, four of those contests involved ties, only five were by shutout and five by run rule.
Their largest HHC-game deficit was six runs after three innings against host Delta on April 7, which the Marauders won 9-6.
The team’s biggest non-conference comeback unfolded on May 22, when the Marauders rallied back from a 9-1 and a 15-7 deficit to beat 2A Heritage Christian, 18-17, to tie the school’s regular-season wins record (21) before breaking it two days later (22-6).
“We all work together. We all hit together, so everything we do, we’re always together. We’re a good team. We have good team chemistry just from playing with each other for so long. We have 10 seniors, and probably seven of them start,” Dobbins said. “When you have that and we’ve all been playing together since we were 12 with the Black Sox, it’s awesome.”
The Marauders’ upperclassmen grew up through baseball, playing local summer-league games, often on the same team, as youths prior to heading into high school with hopes of ending the school’s string of sectional letdowns.
Their sectional championship marked the program’s first since 2011 and eighth all time. At 12-2 in the HHC, their league championship was the school’s second since sharing the crown in 2009 with New Palestine.
“All the things seem to be going our way,” King said. “But, I tell you what, these kids just come out and play. We’ve had this main core of guys playing in games and our bench has been up. We stay active. We stay up. The coaches stay in the game, and my coaching staff is incredible. It’s been fun. It’s been a lot of fun doing this.”
There have also been the necessary learning curves along the way.
Twice this season, the Marauders have lost by shutout. The first was against Brebeuf Jesuit, 6-0, on April 16, and the second to Greenfield-Central, 8-0, on May 11, which tightened the HHC race to an uncomfortable, one-game cushion down the stretch for Mt. Vernon.
A late-game meltdown against formerly, top-ranked 4A Columbus North on April 3, flipped a 9-2 potential upset into a 12-10 loss.
On April 30, the Marauders built a 4-0 lead over Perry Meridian and were ahead 8-7 late before falling 9-8.
A pair of in-season comeback attempts also came up short including against Anderson on April 26, when they trailed 4-2, led 5-4 and eventually lost 8-5. The other was against HHC foe Shelbyville on April 13, when the Marauders charged back from being down 6-3 and 11-5 to tie it 11-all before losing 13-11.
The postseason, however has been the Marauders’ time to apply what they’ve learned.
“Our bats are just working, and they’re going to keep working. If we keep throwing strikes, then we’re going to keep winning games,” Dobbins said. “We’re not done yet.”
Mt. Vernon heads to Jasper County with four players hitting .308 or better, paced by Dobbins, a Ball State recruit, who carries a .560 (47-for-84) batting average with 10 home runs, 12 doubles, 39 RBI and 22 runs.
Senior second baseman Joel Walton (.485) has 13 doubles, 38 RBI, 24 runs and five home runs, including a solo blast he crushed during the regional finals against Cathedral.
Sophomore Eli Bridenthal is hitting .366 and senior Jake Stank (.308) has driven in 28 runs with four home runs and six doubles. Senior A.J. Swingle (.276) has 23 RBI, while senior Payton Bovard has 18.
The team has a .439 on-base percentage, a .321 batting average and is averaging 8.65 runs per game while the pitching staff led by senior Eli Clotfelter and Swingle are holding opposing teams to a .213 average with a 3.45 ERA.
“This team has always been patient. We draw lots of walks. We capitalize on a lots of people’s mistakes and once we do, we put them down,” Walton said. “It’s over.”
Jasper defeated No. 3 Center Grove, 7-4, last weekend for its 20th consecutive win and state-leading 26th regional title. The Wildcats trailed 4-0 before clawing back to upend the host Trojans and their five-game winning streak that included a 3-1 victory over No. 2 Columbus North in the regional semifinals.
Jasper won a 3A state title in 2006 for its fifth championship overall and was 3A state runner-up in 2010, ’13, ’15 and ’17.
“We have to go through another great, tradition-packed program in Jasper, so there again, people are going to say it’s been easy that we just went through Pendleton and Cathedral, and Franklin Central, which has had a nice history being a state runner-up before (1992), and now it’s Jasper,” King said. “We’re just going to ride this. All I know is, there are only four 4A teams playing, and we’re one of them.”
Already in uncharted territory, one more win for the Marauders means one more game, one more week, one more chance to make people believe.
“After the (regional semifinal) before we left, they broke out with ‘Trailblazers,’ so they’re starting to feed into that as well. They love the idea of here we are blazing a trail,” King said.
2021 Class 4A Southern Semistate Championship
When: Today at 4 p.m.
Where: Alvin C. Ruxer Baseball Field (328 W 10th Street, Jasper, Ind.)
Who: Mt. Vernon (26-6) vs. Jasper (29-2)
Cost: $10 per person
Parking: Fans should use the parking lots at St. Joseph Church behind left-center field.
Restrictions: No coolers or outside beverages will be allowed into the park. Balloons, banners, posters or noise devices such as cowbells will not be permitted.
