FINDLAY – With two outs left to get in Friday’s Division I district final baseball game at Liberty-Benton High School, St. John's Jesuit could have turned to the bullpen, but Titans coach Sam Fischer wanted to give his sophomore starting pitcher Jon Tober a chance to finish what he started.

Clay appeared to have Tober on the ropes a bit with three hits and a run already on the board in the top of the seventh, but Fischer strolled to the mound for a visit with his young pitcher and calmed things down.

Tober locked in and got two straight flyouts as St. John's held on for a 6-2 victory and a district title.

“Right before that first fly ball I was ready to get someone going and we would have gone to our third baseman Will Nieckarz and had him close it,” Fischer said. “But then he got that first flyout and once you're in that spot you just attack and stay in the zone and he got another fly ball. We wanted him to get the complete game. He deserved it. I just wanted to see how he was feeling because he had got to 100 pitches at that point and he said he was feeling good. The competitiveness he has, he wanted to be in there.”

Tober allowed seven hits in his seven innings of work with eight strikeouts and just one walk.

“I knew as a sophomore I'm not going to throw it past them, I just have to put it in the zone and trust my defense, trust my catcher and that's what I did,” Tober said. “My fastball-splitter combo, I was able to work it around them and get outs. Obviously, the nerves were there, but I just knew if I'm confident and I put in the zone, this is how it's going to work out. It feels great.”

In the bottom of the first inning, St. John's got a run when JP Wagner scored on a dropped pop-up by Clay second baseman Vinny Gallaher off the bat of Jake Dukate.

Then the Titans did most of their offensive damage in the second inning when Nieckarz drove in two runs on a single and Wagner added a 2-RBI double on a ball that nearly left the yard to right field.

“We were going in there and being really aggressive,” Wagner said. “We know [Clay starter C.J. Boudreaux] has a really good arm. We've faced him before and he's very talented and attacks the zone. So we were looking to hit strikes and some of them fell. I had an uncomfortable first at-bat against him. He threw a firm fastball at me. So I just got on time with it, sat on it, kept the bat head out there and just hit it where they're not, that's how you play baseball, right? I was just looking for a fastball.”

Tober held the Eagles without a hit until the fourth inning when Clay finally broke through for a run. Alec Sutton led off the inning with a triple and scored on a double from Jase Kennedy.

St. John's added another run in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI groundout from Declan Loisel.

With the Titans leading 6-1 in the top of the seventh, Jared Hoersten led off with a double, and following a strikeout by Grady Spears, Noah Schacht laced a single. Christian Mays then drove home Hoersten with a single, leaving two runners on with one out.

That's when Tober was able to buckle down and get flyouts from Kale Wilkins and Sutton to end the game.

“We have a group of guys that are resilient, believe in each other, and respond to and handle adversity the right way,” Fischer said. “And we have a group of guys that are good people with each other. That credit is due to our senior class. They deserve this. They've worked their tails off and they deserve this. It's a big accomplishment, especially in this district. Between the teams in this area and the other district that we are going to go face it's just good baseball and you've got to be sharp. It's a huge accomplishment for these guys, but knowing this group, they don't want to be done yet and they are not done yet. We are just going to keep moving forward.”

First Published May 27, 2023, 12:55 a.m.