BELLEVILLE — Just 11 days after beating rival Belleville by a run in the regular season finale, the Glarner Knights were ousted by the Wildcats in the playoffs — to the tune of a 15-2 five-inning thumping on May 31.
On May 20, Trevor Syse pitched six solid innings for Belleville, allowing two unearned runs. The Knights won that game with a walk-off in the bottom of the seventh.
“We played a solid baseball game (on May 20), unfortunately we didn’t play as well as we wanted to today; as well as we know we can play,” New Glarus coach Chris Rear said. “Hat’s off to Belleville, though. They are a really good team. They are well coached, good players, really good in the middle of the order, and sometimes you just get beat; sometimes balls don’t go your way.”
In the playoffs, Syse continued his successful ways, striking out nine and allowing one earned run in five innings. The bats for Belleville also woke up.
Syse was 3-for-4 with a triple, home run and six RBIs from the two-hole. Carson Syse had two hits, two walks, two RBIs and two runs scored as well. The Wildcats finished the day with 11 hits and five walks. New Glarus starter Eli Zimmerman was chased after 2.2 innings, having allowed six runs (one earned). Leyton Mihlbauer tossed a laborious 1.1 innings to finish the game. The Knights committed four errors.
“I think to moments in the game, they had four hits before that big triple down the line, and none of those balls left the infield. But, you know, they (Belleville) put themselves in that position, and that’s just how it works out sometimes,” Rear said. “We put ourselves in too many tough situations, and hats off to Belleville — they hit it where we weren’t.”
Rear said that despite the less-than-optimal conclusion to the season, he thought the spring campaign was a positive for himself and the program. New Glarus finishes 10-9 overall, and took second in the Capitol South.
“I love this group of kids. They’ve done a wonderful job of building the program and representing the program the right way,” Rear said. “When we started the year, we had graduated 6-7 seniors that had played a lot of baseball, were solid leaders and were commanding personalities on the field and in the dugout — take-charge type of kids. We weren’t that to start this year. We didn’t quite know who we were or who we would end up being.
“I told them to relish the good times from the year. We had three walk-offs, including Belleville at the end of the year. We finished second in the conference by ourselves for the first time in — I couldn’t even tell you when, it’s been so long. You get beat by two runs on a ranked D2 team in Edgewood, you get beat on a walk-off by Mineral Point, a perennial power that was ranked in D3, and you get a ranked Pecatonica team that’s always good and they get us 5-2 at home. We know that when we are focused up and play good baseball, good things happen and we can compete with anybody. We just need to get over that hump and play more consistent baseball every day instead of riding the rollercoaster.”
Belleville lost in the regional final to Deerfield the next night, 4-1. Deerfield will face Cuba City in the sectional semifinal June 2 at Prairie du Chien.
