By MATT PIKE
For a third consecutive year, the Benton Cardinals baseball team celebrated around home plate after winning a district championship, beating the Chillicothe Hornets 6-2 for the Class 4 District 16 championship.
The Hornets took the lead in the first inning when Hubby Ralls reached on an error, and later moved all the way to third on wild pitches from Benton starter Zaidyn Woodward, before scoring on a ground out by Noah Rinehart for the 1-0 lead. On the mound Rinehart worked quickly through the first inning, with Benton attacking fast and swinging at the first pitch, making it a five pitch inning for the Chillicothe starter.
But in the second inning, the Cardinals took the lead. Back-to-back singles from Cy Polley and Boston Cook led off the inning, before runners were on the corners as Cook was thrown out at second on a bunt from Kendrick Elkins. Polley scored the tying run on a single from Titan Helfrey, and after the bases were loaded when Coltyn Hollingsworth was hit by a pitch, a ground out from Porter McCarthy for the second out gave Benton a 2-1 lead.
The Hornets had a chance to score in third inning, the bases loaded with no outs after walks to Ralls and Howie Donoho, and a hit by pitch for Rinehart. With courtesy runner Paxton Keith on second base, Dane Ireland hit a line drive to McCarthy at second base, who promptly fired the ball to Elkins at first base with the runners moving, who then threw the ball to Carson Coy at shortstop covering second for a triple play to end the threat.
Head coach Johnny Coy says he’s only seen a play like that one other time in his career.
“The exact same play happened over the summer with the Mustangs, we were playing at Carroll, bottom of the ninth, no outs, we were walking everybody, brought in a new pitcher, first batter right to Truman Bodenhausen, to the shortstop, to the first baseman, game over, left Carroll stunned,” Coy tells reporters after the game. “But that’s literally only the other time I’ve seen it, which is crazy cause it happened last summer, but yeah it was a phenomenal play, everybody was aware of what was going on, and heads up play for everybody.”
Benton added a run in the bottom of the third inning on a single from Polley, driving in Coy after his leadoff double. In the fifth inning three more runs scored for the Cardinals, McCarthy scoring on an error by Ralls, after a double steal by himself and Coy, with Coy scoring later in the inning along with Xander Tiller on a two RBI single by Cook to make it 6-1 Cardinals going into the sixth.
With the bases loaded and one out in the sixth inning, Chillicothe scored their final run off Woodward on a wild pitch, with Jack Marshall coming in to score. Woodward got a pop out from Ralls for the second out, but then hit Rinehart with a pitch to reload the bases, before being replaced by Coy on the mound. Coy immediately got a strikeout on Donoho to send it to the bottom of the sixth.
After Benton added no more runs in the bottom half of the inning, despite having a chance with back-to-back one out singles, and then getting the bases loaded with two outs. Then in the seventh inning, Coy struck out two batters and got Cooper Helton to fly out to end the game.
Woodward earned the win, pitching 5.2 innings giving up five hits and two runs, just one earned, while striking out three and walking five. Coy pitched an 1.1 innings with three strikeouts. At the plate, Polley was 2-for-4 with an RBI. Cook was 2-for-3 with two RBIs.
Benton now advances to the Class 4 sectionals, the round the team fell in last year to Chillicothe. The Cardinals will face Excelsior Springs on Tuesday, on the campus of Missouri Western State University at a time to be determined, not yet announced by MSHSAA.
Benton played Excelsior Springs earlier in the season twice, falling 6-2 and 15-7. Coy knows that the Tigers present a challenge.
“They have a good pitcher going to Johnson County next year, we saw him for seven innings already, they haven’t seen our one or two, so it should be a fun game,” Coy says. “We’re right back here at Missouri Western in front of some really good fans from the southside and it should be a fun night.”
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