AT THE PLATE … North Central catcher Alex St. John makes the catch during the Eagles’ district semifinal against Edgerton.
PHOTOS BY REBEKAH DELL / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
INTO THIRD … Kellen Sanchez of Edgerton hustles into third base ahead of the throw during the Bulldogs’ 4-3 district semifinal win over North Central. VIEW 105 PHOTOS OF THIS CONTEST FOR FREE AT WWW.THEVILLAGEREPORTER.COM
By: Joe Blystone
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
publisher@thevillagereporter.com
BRYAN (May 28, 2026) – MLB Classic wasn’t in attendance. Maybe they should’ve been. The Division VII district semifinal between Edgerton and North Central started out with a dominating pitching performance by the Bulldogs’ Kellen Sanchez only to have North Central tie the game, using just one hit.
Then after Edgerton grabbed a late-inning lead, North Central (13-8) rebounded to come within a run thanks to a gritty at-bat from injured Jackson Poynter in the top of the seventh.
The climax came when the Eagles had the tying run on third with no outs in the last inning. Maddox Baker rode in like the cavalry in an old Western movie, to rescue the Bulldogs by getting the last three outs in a wild 4-3 win.
“That’s tournament baseball,” Edgerton coach Mike Gilliland said after the game. “You have to find ways to win.
“We just talked about it and maybe this was not our best defensive game, but we did enough with the bats at the end of the day, we had more runs than they did.”
“Credit to North Central. They battled and found ways to score runs,” he added. Edgerton moves on to play Leipsic in the district title game at Patrick Henry on Saturday at noon.
To say that Sanchez was in total control the first five innings would be an understatement. The Bulldog right-hander struck out 10 Eagles without walking a batter or giving up a hit in that span.
North Central’s Tyler Meyers was nearly as effective through three, giving up just one hit along with a walk.
Edgerton got to Meyers in the fourth to take a 2-0 lead. Jackson Flower led off with a single up the middle and stole second. One out later, Sanchez delivered a single to plate the first run of the night, then went all the way to third when the ball got through Garrett Shockley in left.
Poynter, playing with an oblique strain, made a diving stop at short on Myles Baker’s hot grounder, but his only play was at first as Sanchez scored on the play.
That lead held up until the sixth. Brody Taylor reached on Myles Baker’s throwing error, but Sanchez put away the next two hitters to leave him at second.
Briggs Fiser popped up what looked to be an inning-ending out, but Myles Baker dropped it, then threw high to the plate as Taylor raced around to score.
Fiser, running hard the whole way, ended up at third and scored the tying run when Easton Fidler got the first Eagle hit of the night, a base hit to right on a 3-2 pitch.
Edgerton (13-12-1) came right back to regain a two-run lead in the bottom of the inning.
Flower rammed a double into the left-center gap, and chugged home when Noah Weaver singled through the left side to put the Bulldogs back up and went to second on the throw to the plate.
Myles Baker’s single moved Weaver to third with one down.
Brady Everetts laced a drive toward the left field corner, but Shockley made a running snow-cone catch that kept Everetts off the bases but still scored Weaver to make it 4-2.
“They have produced for us all year,” Gilliland said of Flower and Weaver. “It would’ve been really easy to feel bad for ourselves in that situation after making a mistake we shouldn’t have but those guys said, ‘We are going to pick that mistake up’ and they made plays to do that and that’s the kind of intensity they have.”
Sanchez had Logan Clark down in the count leading off the top of the seventh but plunked the Eagle first sacker with a pitch.
Poynter, who was being DHed for because of his injury, then came to the plate, and in classic heroic manner, rifled a shot to deep center for a run-producing triple that sliced the Edgerton lead to 4-3 and put the tying run on base with no one out.
Gilliland then brought Maddox Baker to the mound in an attempt to shut down the rally and save the game. The shortstop-turned-game-saver did just that.
A strikeout, pop fly to very short left and another strikeout around a two-out walk were nothing short of a Mariano Rivera-like performance to carry Edgerton into Saturday’s title contest.
“I thought our pitchers threw really, really well,” Gilliland said. “Maddox Baker coming in with a runner on third and nobody out and get three outs through a little bit of trouble.
“Big credit to him. It’s really tough to come in [cold] and just pound the strike zone like that and he did that.”
“Credit to Kellen who had a no-hitter going through [almost] six innings, I thought our pitching kept us in it today.”
NCHS 000 002 1 – 3 3 3
EHS 000 202 x – 4 5 2
WP- Kellen Sanchez (IP-6, R-3, H-3, K-10, BB-1)
LP- Tyler Meyers (IP-5.1, R-4, H-5, K-3, BB-1)
LEADING HITTERS: (Edgerton) Kellen Sanchez – single, RBI; Jackson Flower – double; (North Central) Jackson Poynter – triple, RBI
