When the baseball All “A” Classic’s annual two-day state tournament wrapped up Sunday night, there was still one thing yet to be determined — a champion.
Owensboro Catholic advanced to the final when they beat St. Henry 4-1 Sunday afternoon, and the Aces were set to take on the winner of Walton-Verona/Lexington Christian for the championship.
It was already determined if W-V advanced that the game wouldn’t be played Sunday evening, a decision made by their school board. But no matter who the Aces were set to play, it was said a date would be determined by the end of the night.
With Walton-Verona beating Lexington Christian 7-6 in eight innings, those in attendance then knew the game wouldn’t be played Sunday but they expected to know when the game would be played.
That didn’t happen, as All “A” officials exited the stadium without confirming any details between the two head coaches, so neither knew when the final game would be played when they left the field Sunday night.
To get to the championship, Owensboro Catholic had to take down St. Henry, holding the Crusaders to just one run in the 4-1 victory.
Finley Munsey got the nod on the hill for the Aces and the senior did his job, as he struck out 10 and allowed one earned run in six innings of work.
Catholic coach Derek Hibbs said Munsey set the tone.
“He threw well,” Hibbs said. “He had good velo today. We really didn’t play a clean game defensively. Usually, we’re pretty sharp. I think we had four total errors, three in one innings that gave them their one run. From a pitching standpoint, he kept them at bay the entire game. Luke (Scales) came in and closed it out, shut it down. Definitely kudos on Finley. Our pitching, first two games of this have been very, very good. We were set up nicely for whatever pitching we had for a third game too.”
Catholic went up 1-0 in the bottom of the first when Munsey added an RBI, but three errors in the top of the third for the Aces tied the game at 1-1.
In the bottom of the third, the Aces added three runs with RBIs from Munsey, Braden Mundy and Sam McFarland to give them the last lead they would need in the game.
“I feel like we could have scored more late but their lefty, we went three up, three down the last three innings we hit,” Hibbs said. “I think an advantage we would have had in this game is take advantage of their defense and catcher. Those guys, whenever we got on the bases, we had a couple hit-and-runs early that helped us get guys in scoring position and move the ball around.”
Despite a major rain delay and now a question as to when the final will be played, neither deterred the Aces players throughout the weekend.
“We didn’t play last year but all these guys have played a ton of summer ball,” Hibbs said. “They’re used to rain, five-day tournaments and a set schedule, nobody ever follows that schedule. We talked about that Saturday night. Once they said that first game would be at 8:30 a.m. and we play at 12:30 p.m., the odds of being able to start all these games within two hours, we knew it.
“We played late last night, got back up. I thought we were up a little bit early but we flattened out some. It is hard, it’s hard to stay up and motivated but we talked about it throughout the game. We were ready to go for a championship tonight if we ended up playing it.”
Luke Evans added two runs in the game for the Aces.
Catholic is scheduled to take on Owensboro Tuesday, but the game could be moved if a date is set with Walton-Verona for the All “A” championship.
