PLAINFIELD — History wasn’t on their side. Far from.
In a regional final for the first time in 49 years Saturday night after winning the program’s first regional semifinal game over the course of that same span earlier that morning, the Mt. Vernon Marauders decided enough was enough.
There were opportunities, and the Marauders capitalized. There were mistakes, too, but they recovered without a flinch. There were moments of panic, but the Marauders kept their cool.
Mt. Vernon head coach Brad King calls his Marauders ‘trailblazers,’ and they haven’t merely embraced the label, they are personifying it by rewriting history.
“Coach came up with trailblazers, and we’re going to stick with that. We love the phrase,” Mt. Vernon senior Joel Walton said. “Our team has so much fight. We don’t give up. We’ve been down multiple times this season, and we just don’t give up. We always trust each other. We fight.”
The Marauders landed two knockout blows during the Class 4A Regional 3 tournament at Plainfield High School on Saturday, and with each swing, they halted a pair of generational droughts.
In the morning’s regional semifinal, senior ace Eli Clotfelter pitched a complete-game with 12 strikeouts while Walton drove in a pair of go-ahead runs in the bottom of the sixth after trailing 2-1 en route to a 6-2 win over Franklin Central.
The victory marked the program’s first regional game victory since 1972, snapping a 49-year drought.
And, it was only the start.
Down again later against No. 7 Cathedral, by one run 3-2, in the evening’s regional championship game, the Marauders refused to let their chance slip away.
“We just keep fighting. That’s one of our things that we’ve been doing all year. Whenever we get down, we don’t quit,” Mt. Vernon sophomore Eli Bridenthal emphasized. “We got really good team chemistry. Everybody likes everybody. There aren’t any bad attitudes. That’s a real good thing. We’re always staying up.”
And once they do get up, they don’t fall back.
Scoring five decisive runs in the final two innings during the regional semifinal to win, the Marauders made it four unanswered runs in their encore against Cathedral through the final two frames to win 6-3 and capture the program’s first regional championship in 50 years.
“This is awesome. As far as I can remember, we have never beaten Cathedral. This is just amazing for us to win, finally. We haven’t won a regional since 1971,” Walton said.
That was then, this is now, and the Marauders are achieving it while riding an 11-game winning streak.
Up 1-0 over Cathedral after the top of the first, the Marauders made their intentions known against Franklin Central in the morning, winning their first regional game since dropping their last five since 1972.
An RBI sacrifice by Jake Stank to score Landon Clark, who reached base on a near-fence clearing lead-off double, put the Marauders (26-6) in control.
However, Cathedral (24-6), who last lost to Mt. Vernon 9-7 in the 2016 sectional semifinals, tied the game up twice with a RBI groundout in the bottom of the second and a RBI hit in the fourth.
“We kept up. We kept screaming. We knew this was going to be a tight game. Nobody expected this to be a blowout. It was going to be a tight, close, one-run game, and when they made mistakes, we just capitalized,” Walton said.
He drought is over! @mvmarauders baseball wins first regional championship in 50 years.
4A Reg 3 championship game: FINAL Mt Vernon 6, Cathedral 3 @GDRsports pic.twitter.com/2tHXoLTYjt
— Rich Torres (@RichTorres23) June 6, 2021
Walton, who went 2-for-4 with two RBI against Franklin Central, stepped up again against Cathedral, blasting a two-out home run in the top of the fourth to put Mt. Vernon ahead 2-1.
“It got us some energy back. Hunter (Dobbins) is obviously our hitter. He’s got the average. He’s got everything, but Joel Walton has been clutch for us all year long. He gets a big hit in the first game, knocks in a couple of runs and does it a different way. Gets a big hit tonight to get our energy back,” King said. “Joel Walton is a huge part of why we are where we are right now.”
The team’s chemistry and resolve are two other key reasons.
Down 3-2 after the bottom of the fifth, a passed ball scored Cathedral senior Camden Jordan, a Louisville recruit, to break a 2-2 tie as the ball slipped past Dobbins behind the plate.
For some teams, it could have led to a downward spiral. Not the Marauders.
“I couldn’t see the ball, but I was the next one up at-bat and I had to make up for it,” said Dobbins, a Ball State recruit. “I told myself, I’m getting on base no matter what happens here. You get to make up for little things like that. It’s a big run. They went up 3-2 on me missing a passed ball, and that’s crucial.”
Dobbins led off the top of the sixth with a six-pitch walk, which Stank followed up with a double. A wild pitch with Bridenthal at-bat scored the game-tying run as courtesy runner Bryce Miller, known as the Milkman to his teammates, delivered.
A fielder’s choice throwing error to home led to a 4-2 lead as Stank scored and Bridenthal went to first, and with two outs, the latter came up huge dice roll.
The hero who stole homeplate to win the Marauders’ outright Hoosier Heritage Conference title last month, Bridenthal worked his magic again, stealing the Marauders’ fifth run with Nate Weaver at the plate.
“It was instinctive. I thought that in my head, if the ball got away from the catcher, even just a little bit, I was going to go. Just gamble,” Bridenthal said. “That’s what I’ve been doing all year, gambling. Sometimes if pays off. Sometimes it doesn’t. Tonight, it did.”
Bridenthal found the crease he was looking for and Walton put the Marauders in position to score an insurance run in the top of the seventh.
Striking out for the third out in the seventh, the third strike was dropped, as Walton sprinted to first base to load the bags.
The error was followed up by another Cathedral wild pitch that scored Swingle from third, who got on with a one-out double.
“We just keep plugging away. We come out and we make plays and we try to put pressure on the defense, and that’s what we did,” King said. “There’s never any quit. There’s no quit in this group, and that’s what we did. We plugged away and got the job done.”
Bridenthal nailed down the game relieving Swingle, who went 5.0 innings with three walks and six strikeouts.
Bridenthal walked two and struck out three in 2.0 innings, but Stank secured the final out on a deep fly ball to right field by Jordan.
“I’m so glad Jake caught that. It was close. Made me a little nervous, but we got the out,” Bridenthal said. “Sometimes you hit the ball hard and it just goes to the right person at the right time.”
As a final four team, the time is now for the Marauders, who haven’t played in a semistate game since 1971.
“It’s crazy. I can’t put it into words. Two-hundred and fifth-seven schools have won a regional championship since the last time we won a regional championship, and I told these guys this,” King said. “This team we just beat, Cathedral, has probably won 16 in that 50 years span. Maybe even more. I don’t even know. So we knew for us to break down that barrier, we had to do something special, and we did.”
The Marauders will face host Jasper (29-2) in the southern semistate on Saturday at 4 p.m. with a chance to go where no other Mt. Vernon baseball team has ever been.
“The emotions are crazy right now. All the adrenaline. Can’t really think straight,” Stank said. “Now that we’ve got to the postseason, especially right now, we’re really locked in. When we’re getting down, we’re trying to fight back and I think that really showed to help us pull through.”
