Baseball wins Co-District Championship
After at 10-1 win over Bandera on Tuesday evening, the Wimberley Texan baseball team knew they still had a chance. With one game left to play, the team was one game behind Llano in the district standings and one game ahead a Boerne.
The stakes of the game were high on Friday night. A loss to Boerne and the Texans would end up in a two-way tie for second place forcing a playoff game for district seeding. A win, coupled with a loss from Llano, would propel the Texans into a tie for first place and a co-district championship.
Head Coach Stephen Wisdom was honest about his expectations from the beginning of the season.
“When you graduate all your starters, you obviously don’t know what you can expect,” Wisdom said. “We just wanted to get into the playoffs and see what we could do from there.”
Now the Texans stood one game away from a possible district championship.
Wimberley jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the top of the second inning. Multiple walks and a sacrifice bunt led to the first run.
Craig Symmes stepped to the play with the bases loaded and one out. Boerne attempted to turn a double play on a grounder in the infield but Symmes beat the throw to first base. One run had scored, and Jake Donley, who was on second, rounded third as Boerne made the throw to first. When Symmes was called safe, Donley was able to score the third run of the inning on an aggressive play on the base paths.
“We have done a really good job of manufacturing our own runs and putting pressure on their defense,” Wisdom said. “We don’t hit it out of the park, but we do a lot of things inside of it.”
Boerne responded with a score in the bottom of the second inning and the score remained the same through the third. In the fourth inning, the Texans scored the proverbial dagger to pull away.
Jack Meismer and Gage Keate started off with base hits to get runners of first and third. Holden Rushing was asked to do one of the most difficult acts in baseball – the suicide squeeze. With Meismer running home from third as if he were stealing home, Rushing squared up to the ball and laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt down the third base line.
“Boerne’s third baseman tried to come home to get the runner out, but he scored,” Wisdom said. “Rushing was able to make it to first base safely.”
With one run already scored in the inning, Wimberley had runners on first and third base. Symmes stepped to the plate and blasted a shot.
“I thought it had a chance to go out of the park,” Wisdom said. “The kid in left field caught the ball as he ran into the wall, so it turned out to be a sac-fly.”
Wimberley would go on to finish off Boerne 6-3. Later that evening, the Texans found out that Llano had lost. As the regular season ended, Wimberley would finish as co-district champions.
Since Llano had beaten Wimberley twice this season, they will remain the first seed in the district with the Texans taking the second seed.
The Bi-District Championship will be a three-game series starting on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Pflugerville Conley. Game two will start at 5 p.m. on Friday and if necessary game three will follow Friday evening.