Cavaliers earn tickets to District ACME

ST. HENRY - The number one seed and regular season champion Coldwater Cavaliers qualified for the ACME district tournament Tuesday night as they defeated the Parkway Panthers 10-4 in the Mercer County sectional winners bracket championship at the Wally Post Athletic Complex.

Coldwater will take a 19-5 record to Thursday night's sectional championship game against the Fort Recovery Indians who defeated the Parkway Panthers in the losers' bracket championship game Wednesday. The Indians beat Marion Local 10-9 in eight innings in the nightcap to advance to the losers' bracket final.

The Cavalier winning formula on this night was old as the game itself, putting the ball in play with timely hitting, defense and good pitching.

On the night the Coldwater offense was based on small as they had five bunts, three for sacrifices and two for base hits The Cavaliers also got great production from the bottom of the batting order as batters 6-9 - Jordan Borgerding, Justin Goubeaux, Bill Geeslin and Gavin Keck - combined for six hits in 12 at-bats. The quartet scored six runs, drove in four and laid down two sacrifice bunts.

"I know those in the bottom of the order did well and I told them that I can say enough about what they did," said Coldwater coach Romie Schwieterman. "We are a very unselfish, blue collar type of team. We have no super stars, we just have a team that wants to play and enjoys playing together and they are willing to do whatever needs to be done to win.

"You stress execution and defense and pitching and tonight we got it all," continued Schwieterman. "They were never evident, then in the fourth we moved runners, we bunted, we squeezed and when you can do that it kind of breaks the back of the other team. We knew Parkway would keep coming back and they did until we got Goubeaux's home run in the seventh."

The small ball came into play right away in the first inning as Chad West-gerdes walked to lead off the game, was sacrificed to second by Tony Harlamert and he scored on a single by Keith Wenning.

Coldwater added two more markers in the second to make the score 3-0. Jordan Borgerding and Tony Goubeaux singled to start the inning. After Bill Geeslin moved the runners with a sacrifice, Gavin Keck and Westgerdes each plated a run with a RBI single.

Coldwater blew the game open scoring four times in the fourth to take a 7-1 lead. Goubeaux led off with a single, was bunted to second by Geeslin and scored on a double by Keck. Keck scored when a ground ball by Westgerdes was thrown away fro a three base error. Keck then scored on a beautiful squeeze bunt by Harlamert. Harlamert scored the final run of the inning on a double by Wenning.
Fort Recovery-Marion Local

The Fort Recovery Indians recovered from blowing two leads late in the ball game to score the winning run in the bottom of the eighth to defeat the Flyers in an elimination game in the nightcap.

Fort Recovery a 6-2 lead through the first three innings. Bobby Rammel and Curt Heitkamp each had a two run double to pace the Indian attack
The Flyers score five runs in the fifth inning to take their firs t lead of the game 7-6 on a sacrifice fly by Ryan Albers.

Fort Recovery came back to take a 9-6 lead, scoring three times in the sixth keyed by singles by Derek Koesters and Matt Braun.

Marion rallied back one last time, scoring twice in the seventh on RBI singles by Nathan Thobe and Marcus Moeller.

Fort Recovery scored the winning run in the eighth as Toby Metzger, Bobby Rammel and Derek Koesters walked to load the bases. With Matt Braun at the plate and a 1-0 count, Flyer pitcher Troy Prenger uncorked a wild pitch to allow Metzger to score the winning run.