TOM HARRIS
The Ashtabula County Special Olympics softball team beat the clock Saturday, and then it beat the Franklin Flyers Gold to win the Ohio Special Olympics state Division III softball championship. It was the first state championship in the team’s 24-year history.
“It was awesome,” Ashtabula County coach Greg Baker said. “I never saw so much jumping around and screaming and hollering in all my life.”
The celebration was all the more exciting because just a few minutes earlier it looked as though the Lakers would return from the tournament in Oregon, Ohio as the runners-up. They were down, 10-6, to the Flyers in the championship game, and the 90-minute time limit was about to expire.
“There were five minutes left after six innings,” Baker said. “So we had to hustle out on the field and get them out before time expired so we’d be able to bat in the bottom of the seventh.”
The Ashtabula County defense got its job done. Then the Lakers picked up their bats and found the holes, pounding out six straight hits. The sixth hit, Will Jenner’s lined single to left-center, brought home Adam Henson and Mike Barricklow to give the Lakers a 11-10 victory and the state championship.
“It took Will (Jenner) a few minutes to realize what he had done,” Baker said. “I was the coach at first, and Will just stood there for a minute. Then everybody started jumping around and yelling. Will looked at me, and I said, ‘Will, we won!’”
Ashtabula County had an easier time in its semifinal game with Richland County. Jeremy Waterman’s first-inning grand slam put the Lakers on course to a 24-7 mercy-rule victory. Waterman and Barricklow had three hits each in the win, while Brian Flaugher, Kevin Blum, Bob Stewart, Adam Henson and Jenner contributed two hits each to the attack. And when they weren’t pounding the ball, the Lakers were being patient, with Bruce Carpenter and David Baker both walking four times and Jake Cardona drawing three base-on-balls.
In the end, however, it was the Lakers’ clutch performance in the championship game that all made the difference.
“We made some mistakes against Franklin, and we ended up giving up some runs,” Greg Baker said. “The guys were pretty nervous when the last inning started. They knew they had to get their bats going, and they were able to do that.
“This means so much to the players. This is what they’ve been working for all along. There are guys like Bob Stewart and Jim Flower who playing and hoping for a state championship for 20 years or more.”
The Ashtabula County Special Olympics softball skills team also did quite well in Oregon. Dalton McReynolds, Zach Henson, Sarah Cartner, Damien Kingston, Robin Rich, Angela Milbrant and John Henson all received first-place honors in the softball skills competitions. Donnetta Settles and Loretta Smith finished second in their competitions, Dylan Wludyga and Aaron Plummer fourth.
