DOUGLAS — The Cochise College baseball team won’t be making another trip to the Juco World Series this year.
The Apaches’ season came to an end Friday afternoon with a 12-11 loss in the Region I Division I championship as Yavapai College rallied for eight runs in the top of the ninth inning, and a strikeout left Cochise’s tying run at third base to end the game.
“There’s nothing I can say to alleviate the pain from that,” said Cochise head coach Todd Inglehart. “When your expectations are high and you’re playing big games, it hurts. That’s as bad as it’s going to get.”
With the two-game sweep, the Roughriders, seeded second in the region, will move on to the Western District championship tournament, hosted by the winner of Region 18.
The Apaches finished this season with a 44-17 overall record and were Arizona Community College Athletic Conference co-champions. It was their best finish to the regular season in the last three years and they had high hopes for a third straight appearance in Grand Junction, Colo., for the Junior College World Series.
“We won a bunch of games, the conference, were playing in our third consecutive region championship series,” Inglehart said. “Our expectations were high, and it’s tough to end this way.”
Yavapai, which beat Cochise 7-3 on Thursday in the first game of the best-of-three series, struck early in Friday’s game, but Cochise took a commanding 8-2 lead by the end of the fourth inning and was up 11-4 in the seventh. Jackson Overlund was 2 for 5, including a two-run home run and a double, with three RBIs and two runs scored, Louis Boyd was 4 for 6 with a run scored, and Adam De La Cruz and Bryan Nunez each had three hits.
The teams combined for 28 hits and seven errors on a windy day at the Douglas Campus. Tyler Fallwell started on the mound for Cochise, giving up four runs on seven hits and three walks while striking out five before running into trouble in the eighth.
Kade Wagner came on in relief and got the next batter to hit into a double play, but Wagner walked the bases loaded to start the ninth. He gave up a run on a single, making it 11-5, and De La Cruz moved from third base to the mound to finish the game. He allowed four singles, a walk and hit a batter before getting Luke Doyle to fly out to center field and Yavapai held the one-run lead.
It’s the third straight season the Apaches, who were the top seed in Region I this year, have played for the region title and the second straight year they’ve come up short. Last season, Cochise earned a trip to the district tournament despite being runner-up because the host region’s top two teams earn spots in the bracket.