By RYAN WALKER
The sectional baseball championship wasn’t the way Norwell wanted it or expected it to happen.
Playing host for the first time for a sectional tournament, the Norwell Knights (18-8) ended their season at the hands of the Mississinewa Indians (18-5) 14-10 in hopes of defending the 2023 title. The home crowd packed all three bleacher sections and down both foul lines, standing or sitting in lawn chars. The fans got to witness a roller coaster from start to finish on Memorial Day.
Norwell relied on starting pitcher Lane Lewis for most of the season — a pitcher who will head to Taylor University to begin his college baseball career and entered the final game of the season with a 6-1 record and a 1.86 ERA. But the Indians didn’t care about numbers or statistics, and they jumped on the senior hurler early and often.
One after another, the Indians smacked base hits all over the diamond. One run came in, then another, and two more on Jaren Fortney’s double. It was enough to send pitching coach Lex Hunter to make a mound visit to Lewis.
More hits ensued, and the score became 6-0 before Norwell could trot back into the dugout and grab a bat. No matter what Lewis threw, Mississinewa made hard contact and found grass.
“Surprised, really. That’s all I can say,” Norwell head coach Christian Bohata said. “I thought (Mississinewa) had a good game plan. He’s a great pitcher — had a heck of a senior year. He’s going to be a good pitcher for Taylor University, that’s for sure … They didn’t let them get deep into counts to where he could really mix (his pitches) well. Whether he threw curveballs or fastballs, and even if he located it, they’re hitting it hard.”
Mississinewa’s first inning wasn’t a fluke either. The first two at-bats in the second were hard singles and knocked the Knights’ starter out of the game. Noah Turk came in relief, in which he got the three outs he needed, but one skated across home plate on a passed ball to make it 7-0.
With six more innings of hitting to go, Norwell certainly would have opportunities to chop away at the deficit.
Logan Cotton got it all started with a single, which was the beginning of Norwell’s bases-loaded situation. Up to the plate came Noah Schamerloh, a .261 hitting sophomore with only five extra-base hits on the season with two outs.
Maybe a single would score a run or two, but Schamerloh had other plans. He took a deep shot into right field pull-side and launched a grand slam to the batting cages, sending an earthquake through Ossian.
“Man when he hit that ball, it was gone right off the bat,” Bohata said.
It was the first career home run for Schamerloh, who was also hitting eighth in Bohata’s lineup card.
Even a slam like that one still had Norwell down 7-4, but it felt as if the losing team had more steam than the winning one at that point in the game.
Turk sat down the Indians the next half inning, and the Norwell sticks were ready for some more damage.
The Knights loaded the bases once more with two outs. Cayden Cassel scored from third on a wild pitch, followed by Korben Neuenschwander legging out an infield single on a tough bounce for Indians’ second baseman Lio Matamoros.
Now down by one, Collin Burns, who came to the plate ripped a double to right-centerfield and brought home two more runs. and just like that, Norwell’s 7-0 trailing switched to a one-run, 8-7 advantage.
“When (Schamerloh) hit that ball, it got the rest of our guys in the dugout to believe and that just totally swung momentum,” Bohata said.
In the top of the fifth inning, bottom of the fifth and top of the sixth, Norwell and Mississinewa exchanged leads to add to the drama-filled championship game.
In the top of the fifth, Indians’ hitter Rashad Holmes belted a two-run bomb to left field to regain a 9-8 lead. Then, in the top half, Schamerloh continued his big day with a double for two RBI and snatched the lead back to the Knights 10-9.
For the final two innings, the back-and-forth battle came to a close. Mississinewa kept the pedal to the metal offensively and got two solid innings from its freshman relief pitcher Kavion Martin.
Mason Cox’s double down the right field line was just fair by about a foot or two and put the Indians on top for the final time.
Martin shut down the Knights in the sixth, while his offense went to work.
With only three outs to give, Norwell needed to hold the Mississinewa’s one-run lead to just that to have a chance to tie or win it in the bottom of the seventh. But those red-hot bats never stopped.
Kohen Bailey got an important RBI single to go up by two. Then, Kaiden Campbell’s single and Mason Cox’s sacrifice fly nailed the Knights to a 14-10 advantage.
The four runs were too much to overcome, and Martin held the 14-10 score to a final to win the sectional championship.
“Yeah, obviously not at all how any of us wanted it to end,” Bohata said. “We didn’t come in expecting to lose. They jumped on us early, I thought we battled back really well. I mean, we took the lead after the third. I couldn’t ask for anything else out of the guys. Just didn’t end up our outcome. Sometimes, that’s baseball. Gotta give it to them, they hit the crap out of the ball today.”
Mississinewa will continue its state tournament path in the regional this Saturday, June 1 against Delta. The date and times for the game are unknown.
Norwell’s 18-8 season was a pleasant surprise under first-year head coach Bohata. The Knights lost six of their nine starters in the field and eight seniors overall from 2023, including most of its top pitching and hitting players.
With a mostly new varsity roster, Bohata’s group went through some growing pains and posted a 9-6 record before rattling off seven of their final nine games.
The defending sectional champs reloaded and replenished without missing much of a beat, and now will need to use that experience to fill in a few more holes.
Seniors Lewis and Cade Shelton (Huntington Univeristy) graduated and will be on fall college baseball rosters. Both were the 1-2 punch pitchers and were slated 2-3 on most nights in the lineup. Collin Burns, a staple in the Knights’ lineup, will need his void filled in the outfield. As well as this season went, Norwell’s baseball team won’t be any stranger to doing it again.
“We’re a young group you know with the three seniors, but we got to thank those seniors a lot because Lane Lewis, Cade Shelton, Collin Burns, — all three of them brought us everything they had this year. They taught these younger guys how to play Norwell baseball,” Bohata said.
ryan@news-banner.com
