Greenville baseball's 'incredible' stretch comes to an end

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By John Cummings, Contributing Writer 10:35 PM Saturday, May 28, 2011

XENIA — Greenville High School baseball coach Ryan Fiely could tell his squad was tight heading into the Division II regional finals Saturday at Athletes in Action.

After all, the win in the regional semifinals the night before had pushed the Wave to .500, and standing in the other dugout for the final was the defending D-II state champs.

“We were a little tense at the beginning of the game, and that hurt us,” Fiely said after Jonathan Alder eliminated the Wave 8-2. “Pretty nice isn’t the word for (our tournament run); it was incredible.”

Alder jumped to a quick 3-0 lead after two innings despite just recording just one hit as Greenville committed three costly errors.

“That happens when the pressure is put on people,” Fiely said. “But, we have a lot of underclassmen who have been here now and know what it takes to get back here next year.”

Greenville answered with a run in the third when Robby Detling led off with a single before scoring on a double by Jon Edwards. Alder answered with a run in the third and went scoreless in just the fourth.

“They put pressure on us,” Fiely said. “I think we tried to do too much at times. We got outside of ourselves. They got the clutch hits, they got the timely hits. They are the defending state champs and have a good shot at winning it again this year.”

Greenville scored its final run in the sixth when Matt Orth scored from second on a ground ball to short. Alder went for the force out on the Wave runner at first, but was late. Fiely waved Orth home and he never broke stride to score easily.

For Fiely, tourney run still hadn’t sunk in after they received their runner-up trophy.

“I said it probably 15 times, ‘We are in the final eight in the state,’ ” Fiely said. “It hasn’t sunk in. To be in the final four would have been nice, but being in the final eight hasn’t even sunk in.”

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