(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
LITTLETON — Chatfield entered the sixth inning trailing Regis Jesuit by three runs. By the time Chad Schultz entered the game as a pinch-hitter, the Chargers had pulled even and there were two runners on base with no outs.
Schultz had an opportunity to drastically change the game. And he seized it.
He ripped a two-RBI single give the Chargers the lead and they never looked back. When it was all said and done, Chatfield came away with an 8-4 win over the Raiders.
“Coach gave me a great opportunity and I had runners on second and third,” Schultz said. “I was just going up with a simple approach. That gave us the lead and we never looked back.”
The CHSAANow.com No. 3-ranked Chargers (7-1 overall) rattled off nine hits in that sixth inning, including three doubles. Raiders (6-2) pitcher A.J. Fell was responsible for all seven runs scored during the rally.
“That’s a resilient group,” Regis Jesuit coach Matt Darr said. “They proved that last year when they made a run at the title. They’re a good team. Fell had a good first inning out, but these things can snowball in hurry.”
Fell followed Caleb Sloan who pitched four solid innings for the Raiders, giving up only one run and striking out five Chatfield hitters.
And he got support from his offense. The Raiders held a 2-1 lead going into the fifth inning when designated hitter Travis Marr launched a two-run home run to increase the lead to 4-1.
Meanwhile, the Chargers were anything but aggressive at the plate. Coach Matt Johnson could be heard barking to his players about being their approach at the plate in the early innings.
Before the sixth inning, Chatfield had recorded only two base hits.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
“The game is about consistency,” Johnson said. “If you’re going to take an at-bat off or an inning off, that could result in us not taking a lead or being able to do the things that we need to every time.”
That consistency finally broke through during the seven-run rally, which resulted in the Raiders’ second loss in three games and Johnson couldn’t have been happier with the result.
“That was a fun one,” he said while finally cracking a smile.
Only six outs away from being defeated, Chatfield had finally seen enough of Fell to get a feel. Jake Knoll led the inning off with a double to the wall and moved over to third on a Nate Semmler single. With the tying run on base, Tyler Goff finally gave the Chargers some sign of life with a double in the gap to tie the game.
“We just kept saying ‘next man up,'” Goff said. “That was the mentality and I went up in the box, got down in the count and it was that next man up mentality. He threw me a pitch I could handle and I just swung the bat and put a good swing on it.”
A win over a top-10 team is definitely a momentum boost for a team looking to return to the state championship. Chatfield fell to Rock Canyon in the Class 5A championship last season.
“It’s a huge win for us and it puts a target on our back,” Schultz said. “We need to keep working through it, keep grinding and we’ll go into league with our heads held high and we’re going to keep winning games.”