Assumption wins state title
DES MOINES — At the end of Saturday’s state tournament baseball game, Davenport Assumption catcher Michael Schwartz ran out to the mound and gave reliever Pete Young a big hug.
Perhaps it came as much from exhaustion as celebration.
On a day when the heat index exceeded 100 degrees, top-ranked Assumption weathered a seventh inning uprising to prevail 8-6 over
No. 6 North Polk of Alleman in the Class 2A state championship at Principal Park in front of a crowd of 2,534.
In becoming the first school to win a baseball title in three different classes, the Knights captured their seventh state championship. They trail only Lansing Kee, which has nine, and Norway, which had eight before merging several years ago.
“Baseball has always been important at our school,” pointed out Assumption coach Bill Argo, who was a member of the school’s first championship team in 1982 and coached the 2004 team to the sixth title. “While there is nothing like playing on a team that wins the first one in school history, these last two have also been pretty special.”
Schwartz, the guy behind the plate who walked three times and stroked a key RBI single in the sixth inning, agreed with his coach that being a part of two state championships was something special. The graduated senior is one of four players who also was on the ’04 team, with the others being Dan O’Donnell, Chris Kolar and Ryan Hintze.
“It’s something we’ve worked hard for this year, and it’s a great relief that it’s over and we pulled it off,” Schwartz said. “That sun today was tearing you apart, and I think this was the hottest game I’ve ever played in. Now, I think I’m going to rest my body for a few days.”
All of the Assumption players must feel the same way after Saturday’s game.
The Knights looked like they might be in for a rout when they scored four runs off North Polk starter and loser David Conrad. He was the winning pitcher in Monday’s first-round win over Shenandoah and entered the game with a perfect 11-0 record. The senior right-hander, who had a 1.48 earned run average and 100 strikeouts in 71 innings, wound up allowing six earned runs and didn’t strike out a batter in three-plus innings.
Assumption (38-6) put together five singles by Kyle Steinbrecher, Willie Argo, O’Donnell, Mackey Pangburn and Kolar, plus a bases-loaded walk to Schwartz, for the four runs. Kolar’s single knocked in two runs.
“We had a couple of bloopers and my hit was a chopper to short, so we weren’t exactly killing the ball,” said Willie Argo, the son of the coach who will head to football camp Monday like several others on the baseball team.
“Playing for my dad and winning a state title was nice. When we won two years ago, I was in Florida playing in an elite baseball tournament, but when I was 11 or 12, I was in the dugout with some of those other teams that qualifying for state. It was cool seeing those guys at the state tourney; now I’m one of those guys.“
With Jake West (12-1) on the mound, coming off a 7-inning no-hitter in the first round against Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley, he threw four and one-third more innings of hitless ball. Corey Hillebo smacked a solid single to center to break the spell, and the Comets (32-5), who brought a 30-game winning streak into the championship match, wound up scoring three runs in the frame.
West had also issued a walk before Hillebo’s single, and they moved up a base on an infield out. A two-out infield grounder that should have been the third out went through the legs of shortstop Tyler Mallonee as two runs scored. Another run came in when Steinbrecher and Argo nearly collided on a fly to left-center that glanced off Steinbrecher’s glove for what eventually was called an error.
The Knights, who had added a run in the second inning, also tallied single runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth stanzas. A sacrifice fly by Willie Argo, a wild pitch, Sean Carlin getting nicked by a pitch with the bases loaded and Schwartz’s single got the runs home.
West departed after five innings, with fireman Pete Young entering in the sixth.
“After throwing 130 pitches on Monday, my elbow starting hurting a little in the middle innings, and combined with the heat, I told coach I was pretty well done,” said West, the Winona State (Minn.)-bound pitcher who gave up just the one hit, two walks and one strikeout. “Jumping on them early was big.“
North Polk left a runner at third against Young in the sixth, but then it got a little hairy in the seventh. A walk, a force play, a single and a fly to left put Assumption in a position needing just one out. But a hit batsman filled the bases and Nick Walker cleared them with a double in the right field corner. Young induced cleanup batter Taylor Pickard to bounce out to Mallonee and the Knights’ celebration started.
The celebration will continue today when Assumption’s team will be honored at the school’s baseball diamond. The ceremony will be at 4 p.m.
Dearrel Bates can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or dbates@qctimes.com