Poland Junior League team wins state title
By Gary Housteau
BOARDMAN
First Poland’s Junior League girls softball team won a state championship. Now its baseball team has duplicated the feat.
Other than for a couple of third inning errors when East Holmes scored twice, Poland put it all together at just the right time as it allowed just two seventh-inning singles and had some key base hits of its own when they needed them in the championship game of the Junior League State Tournament to claim an 8-4 victory at Fields of Dreams.
“I’m ecstatic for the kids,” said Poland manager John Shurilla. “We probably had a couple errors this game, a couple of mistakes, but for the most part we held our own. The bats came alive, we got some key hits at some key times and we bunted well. We’ve been really working on that and it came through good today.”
Bailey Swogger stole the spotlight for Poland by pitching 52/3 hitless innings and helped his own cause at the plate two doubles in three at-bats and scoring twce. Jarret Shurilla closed out the game for Poland on the mound when Swogger reached 96 pitches and allowed two runs in 11/3 innings.
“Bailey’s been a workhorse all year,” John Shurilla said. “We were hoping to actually get five, maybe six innings out of him and we had a lot of pitching left over. If you look at the very first game he pitched [in this tournament] he had a one-hitter. He’s been our No. 1 guy all year. He walked a few, but he was fantastic today.”
Swogger, who walked seven, didn’t seem too impressed with his own performance.
“It was kind of rough early on, I didn’t feel like I was throwing as many strikes as I wanted to,” Swogger said. “But I should have trusted my fielders more, they were getting a lot of good outs but there were some slip-ups. But as long as you win, the stats don’t mean too much to me. It was exciting. There was a little bit of stress with the walks but that’s OK.”
Josh Blasko had two timely singles and knocked in three runs and Jake Bacon had two doubles and drove in two runs in the seventh inning to help lead the way for Poland. The locals scored 24 runs in the final two games of the tournament.
“I’ve been struggling lately at the plate so today was today was a pretty good feeling for me,” Swogger said. “We had good hitting, too, to get back in the game a couple days ago which was a big part in getting us to the finals.”
Mission accomplished for Poland, which also beat East Holmes in the championship of the winner’s bracket in eight innings on Thursday, 16-15, in a game that was resumed after it was called because of darkness after six innings, tied at 15.
“Our goal was to win it all here,” John Shurilla said. “We got motivated by our girls – the 13-14 year olds. They’re in Washington right now – they’re in the World Series. So that motivated us. I told the kids, ‘Let’s try to follow up with them.’ And now our next bus stop is over in Fort Wayne, Ind. A lot of these kids, the girls and boys, are classmates so they’ve got something to talk about.”
The regional tournament, which lasts for a week, begins on Saturday and Poland is slated to play their opening game a week from today, according to Shurilla.
“We’ve got some work to do no question,” said Shurilla, who was doused with water by his team in the post-game celebration. “But before that I actually have one kid that I have to drive down to Myrtle Beach tonight. His parents said, ‘You could have him,’ and I wanted him to stay. Andrew Parker, he had a great tournament and he wanted to stay and it worked out great.”