ELYRIA — Elyria’s Big League state championship team knows its enemy — now it just has to figure out how to beat it.
The local baseball team — which is made up of 17- and 18-year-olds from Elyria High and Elyria Catholic — travels today to Wyoming, Mich., to compete for the second straight year in the Big League Central Regional Tournament. Elyria knows that the host District 9 team, that has won the event nine of the past 10 years, will be the team to beat if Elyria hopes to earn a spot in the Big League World Series in South Carolina next week.
“They are very solid,” Elyria manager Kevin Brubaker said. “Three of our losses were to (them). We played them in pool play and they beat us, then we played them in the winners bracket and they beat us and then we came back through and played them in the tournament final and they beat us again.”
The Michigan team outscored the Elyria squad 21-4 during the three games in last year’s regional, and while Brubaker said, “there is motivation to beat them,” he said his team doesn’t have a lot of animosity toward the host team.
“The nice thing was, competitively speaking, they were a solid team, a good team, they didn’t run their mouths — so it’s not like there’s bad blood because they beat us three times,” Brubaker said. “If I have to lose, I’d want to lose to a team like that.”
But Brubaker doesn’t want to lose this time around. Neither does his team.
“We’re pretty confident going into it, I think we have a chance to take it this year,” said catcher Tory Stewart, who was on last year’s regional runner-up squad. “So we’re looking forward to getting up there and playing some good baseball.”
Elyria will open the tournament with a 1 p.m. game Friday against Michigan’s District 2 team, then play Saturday games against Illinois at 9 a.m. and the host District 9 team at 8 p.m. If they are in the top four — of six — teams after pool play, they will advance to a semifinal game Sunday.
Brubaker has many reasons to believe this year’s group could get the job done at the regional tournament, especially since six players — Stewart, Jacob Dorow, Joe Fitch, Mike Sito, Tyler Robinson and Stephen Howard — were all part of last year’s team that finished second.
“Those guys know what it takes to win and what we’ll need to do to be successful in Michigan this year,” Brubaker said. “Then you add on top of that five or six guys on the roster that played in the state tournament with Elyria Little League West as 16-year-olds, and then some of the other guys we added played with me in 2006 as 15-year-olds when we were state runners-up.
“So there’s a lot of experience on this team.”
The other big difference, according to Brubaker, is this year’s team is filled with powerful pitching and an abundance of talent.
“Everyone on this team pretty much pitches,” shortstop Jon Koepf said. “I went down and watched last year and I think they kind of ran out of pitching when they got into the semifinals. This year we’ll have the pitching to get us through those games.”
Elyria will also be bringing some offense with it, and its opponents won’t be able to rest when the Elyria batters are at the plate.
“There’s not a hole in the lineup,” outfielder Brenton Brada said. “We’ll beat you with our bottom lineup guys or with the top, it doesn’t matter. We’re pretty strong.”
Elyria will need that kind of bravado and both the offense and defense to unseat the Michigan District 9 team. But coming off the heels of back-to-back state titles and a strong run at regionals last year, the team believes they can get the job done.
“That would be incredible,” Koepf said. “Winning state was great, but winning regionals would be 100 times better than that … and I think we have a chance to do that.”

Elyria roster

Jacob Dorow, Jacob Suetta, Joe Fitch, Brian Hart, Edwin Cruz, Jon Koepf, Nolan Nueschafer, Dan Poskocil, D.J. Halluer, Mike Sito, Tyler Robinson, Stephen Howard, Gus Long, Seth Harshberger, Brenton Brada, Nick Toney, Tory Stewart and Kyle Hodgeman. COACHES: James Jenkins, Jeff Saxton and Tank Morgan. MANAGER: Kevin Brubaker.
Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com.

 

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