Falcons baseball soars to state title
Junior high school baseball wrapped up the season last week. For two local teams, it ended with a bit of hardware.
Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic School won the SIJHSAA Class S State Baseball Tournament.
“I’m very proud of this group of kids. This is a great group of kids,” SPPCS coach Jim Helfrich said. “I’ve been doing this for 21 years at Ss. Peter & Paul, and this is my 29th year of coaching. I couldn’t be more proud of this group; it’s a very special group of kids.”
The team beat Carrier Mills and New Hope to reach the championship game against Altamont Lutheran Co-op, which they defeated on Thursday, 6-3.
The Falcons only had three losses on the season. SPPCS did beat two of those teams the second time they played, but didn’t get a rematch with the third: Waterloo.
“The Cahokia Conference is one of the toughest in the state of Illinois,” Helfrich said.
The Waterloo Junior High School team actually placed second in Class L on Thursday.
“We got better with every game,” Helfrich said. “We gained confidence in every game we played, win or loss. We made the run for the state title. We had to win six games to make it. They got better with each and every game.”
Overall, this was the fourth time SPPCS has won a state title during Helfrich’s tenure.
“We just had a great group of kids,” Helfrich said. “We had strong pitching. It wasn’t one person; it was a total team effort. I had a big group of eighth graders, we had 11. It makes it very special to have group of eighth graders help put together something like this.”
Pictured is the WJHS baseball team after winning their regional championship. (submitted photo)WJHS head coach Mark Vogel was very pleased with his team’s season.
“We played pretty well coming down the stretch. We won 10 of our last 12 games,” Vogel said. “There was a lot of improvement from a lot of different areas for our kids. As far as the junior high season goes, I’m really satisfied with the last third of the season.”
The Junior Bulldogs beat Triad, 9-5, and Wolf Branch, 8-4, before falling to Marion, 5-0, in the SIJHSAA Class L final.
“As the high school coach, looking back I always have certain things I’d like to get accomplished in a junior high season,” Vogel said. “We accomplished those. Individually, the kids got better. Collectively, as a team, we got better. At this point in time for this age group, that’s pretty important. I’ll look forward to working with these kids into high school.”
WJHS finished the year 19-8. They took third place in the O’Fallon Tournament and second place in their conference.
“We started playing the game more consistently. Earlier in the year, one day we’d swing the bat and the next day not,” Vogel said. “By the end of the year, our pitchers did a good job of throwing strikes, our hitters did good job of putting the ball in play and the biggest thing is, we really improved our defense toward the last third of the year.”
The Dupo Junior High School baseball team also made it to the state tournament. They lost in round one of the Class M bracket to Cobden, the eventual champion, by a 1-0 score.
