By Jacob Heid

GRAND CHUTE – Amherst had a story to finish going into the WIAA State Baseball Tournament in Grand Chute. The Falcons have had a picture-perfect season to date, being 28-0 going into Fox Cities Stadium. Amherst fell just a couple of pages short of that perfect ending, being on the wrong end of a pitcher’s duel in the dead heat on June 15. The Falcons fell 2-1 to Cuba City, suffering their first loss of the season in an elimination game.

“We put ourselves in a situation where it had to be perfection, or it was going to be heartbreak. And unfortunately, baseball is that kind of game,” head coach Bill Held explained. “To come up short, it stings, it hurts a lot, but for the third time in program history we made it to this place.”

The game itself flowed quickly with how much of a defensive game it was. The two starting pitchers, Ben Lee for Amherst and Kobe Vosberg for Cuba City, combined for 12 and two-third innings pitched and 21 strikeouts. Both of them got pulled because of the 100-pitch pitch-count rule.

The offense didn’t get started for Amherst until the fifth inning when catcher Matt Glodowski hit a chopper into left field for Amherst’s first hit. Glodowski was able to steal second base, but he would end up stranded on third.

All of the runs in the game accumulated in the seventh inning. Cuba City scored two runs on a single and one on an error by the Falcons in left field. In the bottom of the seventh, the rally was alive for Amherst. They loaded the bases with no outs, while Lee scored the first run on a pop-out by Aiden Jastromski. With runners on first and second and one out, the Falcons were still alive. Amherst couldn’t get the tying run across the plate, TJ Brandl popped out in foul territory, and Noah Spoelstra struck out to end the game.  Head coach Bill Held complimented his team on their effort in the seventh. 

“To me, that’s the kind of kids they are. They’ve been that way from the beginning,” he said. “They battle, they don’t let up. We’ve been down before, we always come back fighting. I’m proud of the guys, proud of everything that they have achieved this year.”

Amherst succeeded in many ways this season. The thing that will be remembered most is the bond that the players, especially the senior class, had with their coach.

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