
STANDISH — They may be young but the Monmouth Mustangs know what it’s like to be in pressure situations and now they get another.
No. 3 Monmouth overcame a slow start to beat No. 1 Mt. Abram, 6-4, in Tuesday’s C South regional baseball final at Larry Mahaney Diamond on the Saint Joseph’s College campus.
Monmouth was playing in its eighth consecutive regional final with a starting lineup that included three sophomores, three freshmen and one senior. Some of the players, like sophomore center fielder Jake Harmon, have played in six regional finals in the past two school years across the soccer, basketball and baseball seasons.
Harmon had two RBI singles and closed the game with a three-out save after Levi Laverdiere, another sophomore, had hit his 110-pitch limit after getting through six gritty innings and then giving up a leadoff double in the seventh to Ash Rollins.
“Countless times this season it’s been Levi starting the game and then I’ll come in,” Harmon said. “We sort of have a nice dynamic there. It’s so easy to come in after an arm like that and close the game with a lead. He makes it easy.”
Monmouth (15-4) will look for its second state title in three seasons at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Saint Joseph’s against North champion Washington Academy.
Mt. Abram (14-5) had been to one regional baseball final in school history, losing in 2001 to Hall-Dale. The Roadrunners had nine hits and put runners in scoring position in every inning after going 1-2-3 in the first. They scored single runs against Laverdiere in the second, fourth, fifth and seventh innings but a big uprising never came. Laverdiere’s five strikeouts (four looking) came against the middle third of Mt. Abram’s order.
“We had a couple of chances to score more and we didn’t do it,” said Mt. Abram coach Jeff Pillsbury. “But they’re a good team.”
MULTI-RUN MONMOUTH RALLIES
• Down 1-0, Monmouth scored two in the top of the third against Mt. Abram starter Logan Dube, who allowed six hits in six innings. With two runners on, Dube hit freshman leadoff hitter Zane Foyt and walked Laverdiere to force in a run. Harmon followed with an RBI single.
• Mt. Abram tied it in the fourth on an RBI double by Walker Wolfe — Wolfe’s second RBI hit in a 3-for-3 day. But that lead was short-lived when Monmouth put three runs on the board in the top of the fifth in a rally that again featured a hit-batter, a walk, and an RBI single by Harmon. Dube hit a second batter with the bases loaded and Sam Schultz — the Mustangs’ lone senior starter — drove in the third with a sharp single to left.
“I didn’t start on the previous teams. I was part of them but I wasn’t on the field,” said Schultz, adding he was glad he could, “be out here with my guys and do it with them.”
STATISTICAL STANDOUTS
• Monmouth Academy: Jake Harmon (2 for 3, 2 RBI, save); Levi Laverdiere (6 innings pitched, five strikeouts, RBI); Sam Schultz (3 for 4, RBI).
• Mt. Abram: Walker Wolfe (3 for 3, double, two RBI); Landon Marble (2 for 3).
THEY SAID IT
• “It was all about finding the strike zone and to keep pitching from there. I’ve never really been pitching in this situation but we were here last year, too. I kind of settled in when I knew I could find the strike zone and not be as wild around the plate,” Monmouth pitcher Luke Laverdiere, who threw 42 strikes in the first two innings.
• “Most people didn’t think we’d get back here because we have one starting senior and one other senior so it’s just a great feeling to be able to get (to the state final) again,” Monmouth’s Sam Schultz.
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