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Gladstone Baseball Grinds Its Way To District Title
 Click the thumbnails to see video highlights and a replay of the radio broadcast from the title game. MENOMINEE---The Gladstone High School baseball team battled from behind twice on Friday to capture another MHSAA Division Three district championship. The Braves beat Iron Mountain, 16-3, in the semifinals, and then topped Menominee, 8-5, in the title game. The first game of the say saw Menominee beat Superior Central, 2-0, in a pitchers’ dual between the Maroons’ Dylan Beal and the Cougars’ Isaac Rondeau. A couple of unearned runs were the difference for the Maroons. The Braves then faced a struggling Iron Mountain team, and after falling behind early, 3-2, scored 14 unearned runs to win on the mercy rule, 16-3. Davin Mattonen had four hits and drove in four runs for the Braves. Bret Seger also drove in four runs. Aiden Burie and Vinny Rebholz both had three runs batted in at the bottom of the batting order. Aiden Ellis had two runs batted in for Iron Mountain. In the championship game, the Braves were snake bitten for the first four innings as they could not get the big hit with men on base. And the underdog Maroons grabbed the lead on an RBI single by Garrett Carlson in the third inning. Then, in the top of the fifth inning, a sacrifice fly by Beal brought in the second Menominee run. The Maroons had a chance for a 3-0 lead when Catlson hit a line drive toward the left field corner, but was robbed by Gladstone’s Burie with a diving catch at third base. Then, the Braves’ bats woke up. Gladstone scored seven runs in the bottom of the fifth inning, (ending eleven scoreless innings by Menominee pitching). Austin Pepin came through with a two-run single through a drawn-in infield, giving Gladstone a 3-2 lead. Seger was hit by a pitch to force home another run, then Gavin Frossard’s pop fly landed in left field to score two runs, with a third coming home on a Menominee error. All of a sudden, it was a 7-2 game. Gladstone added a run in the sixth inning on a sac fly by Burie, then the Braves survived a rocky seventh inning with Nate Beauchamp on the mound, to close out the district championship. Trevor Thorbahn, after throwing 42 pitches in the win over Iron Mountain, threw another 60 against Menominee to earn another win. The Braves are “pitching by committee” with two of its top pitchers still out of the line-up. Aiden Sevon took the loss for the Maroons, after four scoreless innings imploded in that fifth inning. Gladstone squared its record at 17-17 on the season, and the Braves will host the regional semifinal Wednesday evening against the winner of Saturday’s district tournament, to be played up in Hancock. Game time Wednesday is 5:00 and it will be broadcast live on FM-93.5, AM-600, and on-line at www.rrnsports.com. |
