Baseball season in the Monroe County Region has come to an end.
Monroe and Summerfield, Region’s last two teams standing, bowed out with losses in regional championship games on Saturday, June 6.
Monroe fell 14-0 to Southeastern Conference rival Dexter in a Division 1 game at Northville.
Summerfield was clipped 4-0 by Kalamazoo Hackett.
Both of the teams that ended the season for the Region teams went on to drop state quarterfinal games later in the day.
Dexter fell 5-2 to Detroit Catholic Central and Marcellus outslugged Hackett 9-6.
Greg Depew’s first season as Monroe’s head coach ended at 18-18.
The Trojans dropped three games to Dexter during the regular season by a total of six runs, but fell into an early hole Saturday and could not recover.
The game was called because of the mercy rule after five innings.
The majority of the roster will return for Monroe next spring. Carson Liedel, Asher Simmons, Aiden Homer and Cooper Robinson were the only seniors who started for the Trojans Saturday.
SPRING ARBOR – Summerfield pitcher Reece Kalb carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning.
“He was great all day,” Summerfield coach Reid Olmstead said. “I really thought it was his best game of the year.”Hackett loaded the bases in the bottom of the sixth on two walked and a misplayed bunt, then scored the first run of the game on a sacrifice fly. A pair of singles turned it into a four-run inning.
Summerfield couldn’t muster much offense. A double by Rylee Schiffler, and singles from Russell LaRocca and Josh Horak were the only hits for the Bulldogs.
“We had three inning where we had a guy on second base and at least two of those were with no outs,” Olmstead said. “We were never ablt to get that big hit to score a run. … We played really well overall. We only had one error.”
The only time Summerfield advanced a runner to third was in the seventh inning.
The Bulldogs finished Olmstead’s fifth season as the head coach at his alma mater at 17-8. They shared the Tri-County Conference championship with Whiteford and won a district title.
“I think it was a really good season for us,” Olmstead said. “It was awesome winning the league for the first time since 2019.”
Summerfield will have some rebuilding to do. There were nine seniors on the roster. Four of them were starters.
“The seniors had great careers here,” Olmstead said. “They will be hard to replace. … We have a lot of positions to fill. The good thing is that we had a lot of good, young players and it looks like we will have a big freshman class next year.”
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