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Independence, MO —
William Chrisman baseball coach Jim Pickett will remember his seven seniors from this season as players who fought to the end.
As proof, he could point to the finish of Monday’s 3-1 Senior Night loss to Van Horn at Crysler Stadium.
The Bears (1-24) trailed 3-0 entering the bottom of the seventh inning. Senior outfielder A.J. Phillips started a comeback attempt by doubling off the right-center field wall.
“I waited for that second pitch,” Phillips said. “(It) came right down the middle, and I took it to the fence.”
Phillips “had a lot of adrenaline” when he went to bat, he said. So did his teammates.
“We were screaming from over here (in the dugout),” he said. “We had a couple moments where we were dead, but we got right back on it because this is our last game at Crysler – and we wanted to come back and show everybody that we can win, and we’re a good team.”
Phillips kept the Bears’ comeback hopes alive by eventually scoring on a two-out single. The Bears then loaded the bases before Falcons pitcher Aaron Driskell served up Chrisman’s final out and handed the Bears a non-conference loss.
The attempted rally was in keeping not only with the fight in Chrisman’s seniors, but also the team’s offensive tendencies, according to Pickett.
“All year long, we’ve just been kind of a late-inning team,” he said. “In games like this, that comes back to get you because you run out of outs really fast. We got hot too late in the game.”
As the Bears were getting hot offensively, Driskell found a way to keep cool emotionally and finish his complete-game performance.
“(I told myself) just to keep calm, throw strikes, give us a chance, just let them put the ball in play (and) see what happens,” Driskell said.
Calm, collected thinking wasn’t Driskell’s only resource.
“(My) adrenaline definitely helped me out there,” he said.
When Driskell pitches, Falcons coach Tim Wilson doesn’t worry much.
“He plays in a high-level summer program,” Wilson said. “He’s used to the high-level competition. And we yelled out there, ‘Finish it. Bear down and finish it.’ And so, he did.”
The Falcons (11-8) gave Driskell a cushion to finish it by tacking up their three runs during the fifth inning. For the Bears, “it was (a) pretty clean game” until that inning, Pickett said.
William Chrisman baseball coach Jim Pickett will remember his seven seniors from this season as players who fought to the end.
As proof, he could point to the finish of Monday’s 3-1 Senior Night loss to Van Horn at Crysler Stadium.
The Bears (1-24) trailed 3-0 entering the bottom of the seventh inning. Senior outfielder A.J. Phillips started a comeback attempt by doubling off the right-center field wall.
“I waited for that second pitch,” Phillips said. “(It) came right down the middle, and I took it to the fence.”
Phillips “had a lot of adrenaline” when he went to bat, he said. So did his teammates.
“We were screaming from over here (in the dugout),” he said. “We had a couple moments where we were dead, but we got right back on it because this is our last game at Crysler – and we wanted to come back and show everybody that we can win, and we’re a good team.”
Phillips kept the Bears’ comeback hopes alive by eventually scoring on a two-out single. The Bears then loaded the bases before Falcons pitcher Aaron Driskell served up Chrisman’s final out and handed the Bears a non-conference loss.
The attempted rally was in keeping not only with the fight in Chrisman’s seniors, but also the team’s offensive tendencies, according to Pickett.
“All year long, we’ve just been kind of a late-inning team,” he said. “In games like this, that comes back to get you because you run out of outs really fast. We got hot too late in the game.”
As the Bears were getting hot offensively, Driskell found a way to keep cool emotionally and finish his complete-game performance.
“(I told myself) just to keep calm, throw strikes, give us a chance, just let them put the ball in play (and) see what happens,” Driskell said.
Calm, collected thinking wasn’t Driskell’s only resource.
“(My) adrenaline definitely helped me out there,” he said.
When Driskell pitches, Falcons coach Tim Wilson doesn’t worry much.
“He plays in a high-level summer program,” Wilson said. “He’s used to the high-level competition. And we yelled out there, ‘Finish it. Bear down and finish it.’ And so, he did.”
The Falcons (11-8) gave Driskell a cushion to finish it by tacking up their three runs during the fifth inning. For the Bears, “it was (a) pretty clean game” until that inning, Pickett said.
But the Bears threatened to make that three-run fifth irrelevant with their seventh-inning comeback attempt.
After Phillips doubled, he moved to third on a wild pitch third strike. A foul out and an ill-fated stealing attempt had the Bears facing their last out when Phillips scored on the RBI single. An error and another single set up the bases-loaded finish to the last game the Bears’ seven seniors would play at Crysler in a Chrisman uniform.
Pickett called it “a joy” coaching his seniors, many of whom were first-year varsity players.
“They competed every pitch,” he said. “Whether we were up five or we were down 10, they always played hard, and they always played the same way. They always gave me everything they had.”
