Marengo Academy bows out in AISA semifinal round

LINDEN — Marengo Academy (24-6-1) saw its season end in a loss to Edgewood again Wednesday, falling in both ends of a doubleheader to the perennial AISA power despite late-inning heroics.

David Cayton slid home on a bases-loaded grounder off the bat of Jackson Tate with two outs in the eighth to hand Edgewood the 6-5 victory in game two of the twinbill.

“The most important thing about this series is doing the little things right,” Edgewood coach Bobby Carr said. “We didn’t make a lot of mental mistakes.”

Marengo rallied from a 4-3 deficit in the seventh. David Dunn doubled in Andrew Martin to tie the game before Caleb Broadhead scored a Weldon Aydelott grounder to give the Longhorns the 5-4 lead.

The inning looked as if it would be much bigger before a failed attempt at a squeeze play led to Marengo getting a runner thrown out at third for the first out of the frame.

“There’s a couple of plays we didn’t execute,” Marengo coach Steve King said. “The squeeze play, we didn’t execute. We had a couple defensively we didn’t execute that cost us.”

Edgewood rallied in the bottom of the seventh without benefit of a hit as J.J. Kidd absorbed an errant pitch to lead off the inning before advancing on an error and scoring on another error.

Edgewood took the first lead of the game in the second when Jake Sisson was hit by a pitch and later scored on a Cayton single. Hayden Huckabee tied in the third with a solo homer.

Edgewood regained the lead when Tate scored on a bases-loaded hit batsman that gave Noah Eller the RBI. Marengo knotted it again in the fourth with a solo homer from Wallace Tutt. Dunn went yard in the fifth for the 3-2 lead.

Edgewood then played a little long ball of its own when Sisson and Keith Johnson each hit solo shots in the sixth.

Edgewood took game one 11-5, capitalizing on three early Marengo errors to build a 5-0 lead. Aydelott doubled in Hayden Hall and Martin in the fourth to cut it to 5-2. Edgewood then reeled off six runs over two innings for the 11-2 lead. The Longhorns rallied for three in the seventh as Hayden Huckabee doubled in Robert Tutt and Hall doubled home Daniel Pritchett and Huckabee.

“We came out tight,“ King said. “The errors were costly. They were putting the ball in play hard. That was not our ball game. We normally play well defensively We got great pitching from Kyle Friday, we just made errors behind him. Tip of the cap to Edgewood. They came ready and forced mistakes.”

The game one loss snapped a 21-game win streak for Marengo, which was No. 1 in the ASWA poll entering play.

“We had a great season,” King said. “We came in here with a 21-game winning streak and they had the better day. I love all these young men to death.”