Maple Hill baseball comes up just shoer on senior night, ready for Sectionals

SCHODACK — Despite a senior night loss to rival Greenville, Maple Hill baseball coach Rico Frese says his team is ready for the next chapter – Sectionals.

“When we play well we can compete with any Class C team,” said the coach, who believes a strong regular season schedule has put his team in a good position for Section II’s spring classic. “I always tell the kids going into Sectionals that we never play anybody that’s going to be better than the teams we face all year.”

The Wildcats (10-9, 8-8 Patroon Conference) have had their fair share of setbacks this year including an “unsettling” 72 hours in which the team was outscored 31-5 in a pair of losses to Chatham. But since then the 2009 State Champions have turned thins around and posted wins against Green Tech, Averill Park, Coxsackie-Athens, Taconic Hills, Catskill, and Greenville.

One day after Seniors Noah Roberts and Kris Kretzschmar combined for four hits in a 6-2 routing of the Spartans in Greenville, the team’s lone twelfth graders traveled home for one final regular season game at Canonica Field. The result wasn’t exactly a storybook ending, but one rising senior shined off the backs of guidance from his older teammates.

“Talk about role models,” said Frese of his seniors. “It’s quiet leadership in a good way and they’ve been great with the younger guys.”

With two outs down in the bottom of the seventh inning junior Alic Yager delivered a late game hail mary, tripling to center field and scoring teammates Connor Hall and Christian Bieber. But the Wildcats would come up just a run short, falling 3-2 and splitting the season series with Greenville.

“It was a good hit,” Frese went on to say. “We were down three-nothing and it seemed like a lot more than that but I think his performance was great.”

Yager pitched a complete game on the mound allowing four hits, and three runs (zero earned). The junior ace also struck out five and walked four.

Maple Hill now awaits word from the Sectional seeding committee, who convenes Monday to shape the 2017 Section II baseball Championships.

-Dylan Rossiter – @ByDylanRossiter – [email protected]