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District competition heating up
By Tom Williams
As district week kicks off today for Mahoning Valley baseball and softball teams, just about everyone is ready.
Last week, Mother Nature interfered with two sectional tournaments that won’t be completed until today. In baseball, two-seed Howland will host seven-seed Akron Ellet at Eastwood Field in Niles in a Division II battle. The winner will advance to the Bob Cene Park district in Struthers.
In softball, Cardinal Mooney will host Waterloo today at the Fields of Dreams in Boardman. The winner will move on to Thursday’s Division III district at South Range High School.
Waterloo is the wild card in that district as the top three seeds (South Range, Columbiana, Springfield) advanced. Mooney is the fourth seed and Waterloo is hoping to play spoiler.
Today’s winner will meet top-seeded South Range. The other half of the bracket has Columbiana, whose only loss was to South Range, playing Springfield, which split with South Range during the regular season.
Baseball
Cene Park will be the site of four districts — one in each division. Division II action kicks off today at 4 p.m. with top-seeded Niles playing four seed West Branch.
The second game of the bracket — Canfield vs. Poland — has been pushed back to a 6:30 p.m. (or so) start. Greg Gulas, tournament director, decided to have both of today’s games played on Field 1 which has a much larger seating capacity.
Tuesday, Monday’s winners will play for a district crown at 6:30 p.m. Before that, the Division III semifinals will be played on Fields 1 and 2.
The wild card in that bracket is seven-seed Crestview, which eliminated two-seed Columbiana last week. The Rebels won that game at Firestone Park, 5-3, in eight innings. Their reward is one last battle with Inter-Tri County League Red Tier rival South Range, the three seed.
There is irony in this matchup. At the conclusion of the spring season, the ITCL will dissolve, with seven Columbiana County schools forming a new league without Crestview and seven others from Mahoning and Trumbull counties forming another league without South Range.
A consolation for the Raiders and Rebels in the “League of Their Own” game is that one of them is guaranteed to play for a regional trip.
The other half of the bracket has top-seeded Canton Central Catholic playing four-seed Cardinal Mooney.
At least one ITCL school will send a team to the regional — all four district qualifiers in Div. IV are from the ITCL (Western Reserve-McDonald and Jackson-Milton-Lisbon).
At least two of the Div. I qualifiers are from outside the area (Kent Roosevelt and Walsh Jesuit). In the other half of the bracket, Boardman will play the Howland-Ellet winner.
In Jefferson, Lakeview is a Div. II qualifier and will play NDCL today. In Div. III, Champion and LaBrae qualified for the Leavittsburg district. In Div. IV, Warren JFK, Mathews and Maplewood are playing in the Fairport Harding district.
Softball
Today’s Div. IV district at Western Reserve High School has two local teams. Lisbon will play St. Thomas Aquinas while Western Reserve will face East Canton.
At the Bazetta Township district being played at Candlelite Knolls, Mathews will face Lordstown and McDonald will play Bristol.
In Div. I, Canfield and Boardman are playing a regular-season makeup game today. It could be a preview for Wednesday’s final at the Solon district. Tuesday, Canfield will play Solon and Boardman will take on Aurora in the semifinals.
Three Valley teams qualified for Wednesday’s Div. II district at Alliance High School. Top-seeded Hubbard will play Marlington, followed by Lakeview against West Branch.
The other Div. III district will be contested at LaBrae High School where Champion has the top seed and will play All-American Conference rival Brookfield in Thursday’s semifinal. Kirtland and Conneaut are in the other half of the bracket.