Dragons fall to Birmingham Brother Rice in Quarterfinals

Written Tuesday June 11th, at 7:00 PM

One bad inning, that’s it. That’s all it takes from going home and moving on. The top of the fourth inning decided the faith of the Oakland County Super match up at Saline on Tuesday afternoon.

The game was played at 1:30 PM because of Lake Orion High School having its graduation night at DTE Energy Music Theater in Clarkston.

Birmingham Brother Rice (31-8) used a five run fourth inning to beat the Dragons 7-3 in the state quarterfinals at Saline. The Warriors will move on to play Howell in Battle Creek.

I was not sure why Orion started junior Josh Bays over fellow junior Brad Schaenzer in this game but Bays went three innings only allowing one run.

Then the top of the fourth things started to go down hill.

Birmingham Brother Rice singled, reached on an error and then got an RBI single for a 3-0 lead. Then they got a sacrifice fly making the score 4-0 Warriors and two batters later Birmingham Brother Rice got a two run double to make it 6-0 in their favor.

The six runs were all credited to Bays, five of them were earned. Schaenzer relieved Bays and gave up a run in one inning of work before turning to senior Nick Deeg for the final two innings.

Lake Orion answered by hitting a three run home run in the bottom of the fourth inning courtesy of Schaenzer to cut the Birmingham Brother Rice lead in half at 6-3. The Dragons could not get any more runs after that.

Roman Kuester concluded his high school career before going to Findlay for college with three of the nine Dragons hits but they could not get any runners in scoring position to score more runs. That is a credit to Birmingham Brother Rice’s pitching staff.

The Dragons conclude the season at 32-9 and next season they do return Schaenzer and Bays. Lake Orion will be fine next season but they do lose a lot including Deeg and Kuester among others as they conclude a great season.