Dragons Baseball Wins District. Moves on to Regional for rematch with Hartland

Written Saturday June 1st, at 10:08 PM

The sixth ranked Lake Orion baseball team took the district championship for the second time in two seasons after defeating Oxford 6-1 in the district finals. The Dragons earlier in the day eliminated Waterford Kettering from the playoffs 6-0.

The strength of this team has been its pitching and the Dragons have two left handed pitchers, whom can get the job done in Central Michigan commit, senior Nick Deeg and junior Brad Schaenzer but also they have a right hander in Josh Bays who can also pitch when needed.

Oxford entered the district final with a surprising semifinal blowout over Clarkston 13-1 in six innings. The Wolves were ninth in the state coming into the state playoffs and shared the Red with Lake Orion. Oxford did just about everything right and played well. Clarkston’s defense was just awful. They made multiple mistakes and had errors all over the place, four Wildcats runs were scored on pass balls and wild pitches. The Wolves walked in a run on the bases loaded and then botched a rundown from first to second base. Clarkston only had two hits in the loss to Oxford.

The Dragons in the district pitched 21 innings and only allowed two runs total. Perhaps one of the biggest plays was in the Waterford Kettering game in the bottom of the sixth inning with Lake Orion up 1-0, Bays struck out pitcher Brett Reynolds with runners on second and third base to close out the threat and after that the Dragons pulled away scoring five runs to close out the game.

Lake Orion in the finals was led by Senior Roman Kuester. The Dragons catcher had three hits and an RBI to lead the Dragons against Oxford. The Wildcats in the second game could not solve Schaenzer in the second game after and was caught looking eight times.

The Dragons (30-7) will now move onto the regional semifinals and have a rematch with Hartland and star pitcher Jake Lowery. Lowery who will be going to Michigan State beat the Dragons 7-0 in the regional semifinals at Hartland last season but that was at Hartland.

Now Hartland has to travel into Oakland County where for the Dragons they could have a slight advantage playing at Rochester during the season with the Falcons being in the Red with Lake Orion.

Hartland comes into the regional with 27-8 record feature two very good players in Lowery and Toledo bound senior Jordan Kesson who hit a three run home run against Milford and had a two run shot against Fenton in the semifinals. Lowery struck out ten batters against the Mavericks. The Eagles scored eight runs in the first inning in the 14-3 rout of Milford. Hartland pounded Fenton 8-1 with the help of its second pitcher Alex Wagner whom also struck out 10 hitters in that game.

Next week should be an interesting battle with Hartland at Rochester. The winner of the Orion/Hartland match up will meet the Rochester Adams/Stoney Creek winner in the Regional Finals at Rochester. We’ll see what happens next week.