Baseball, softball squads get quality wins Monday

Monday was a big night on the diamond for the Patriots.
It’s not often such a statement can be made during the second week of the season. There’s still so much time left.
These definitely weren’t tournament games. And neither the Jay County High School baseball nor softball team has started its Allen County Athletic Conference schedule yet.
But the efforts they put together Monday could be defining moments, games that serve as springboards for their seasons.
After suffering its first loss Saturday at Mississinewa, the baseball team grabbed a two-run lead Monday and held on to defeat the defending Ohio Division III state champion Coldwater Cavaliers. The softball team, which had lost four of its first six games after setting a school-record with 23 victories a year ago, fought back from a pair of deficits for a 5-4 win over Huntington North, the defending sectional and regional champion.
The Patriot baseball team came up with some big hits and key defensive plays to knock off Coldwater.
Senior Tanner Reynolds got JCHS started in the second inning with the first of his two hits. Cole Stigleman and Andy Kohler followed with an RBI apiece as the home team erased a one-run deficit and took the lead for good.
Coldwater loaded the bases with one out in the top of the third inning, but was unable to get a run to the plate thanks in large part to Reynolds. The third baseman fielded a bouncing ball, stepped on third base and then fired to home plate. His toss got to Jacob Geesaman in plenty of time, and the catcher made the tag on Petey Post to end the threat.
The Cavaliers would score once in the seventh inning, but Jay County held on for the victory.
While the Patriot baseball team did the little things to come away with its victory, the JCHS softball team used big hits to top the Vikings.
Larissa Boles connected on a two-run home run to pull the Patriots even in the third inning.
And in the fifth, Gabby Hart hit her third bomb run in the last three games, this time a three-run shot, in the fifth inning to give the home team the advantage.
Jay County also got some timely defensive plays from senior catcher Catherine Dunn, who threw out a pair of base runners to help preserve the one-run win.
This early in the season, it’s hard to truly know the quality of any opponent.
Perhaps Coldwater lost enough players to graduation that it is no longer a state-championship caliber team. Then again, it entered Monday’s game with a perfect 7-0 record and has won at least 20 games in each of the last three seasons.
And there’s no doubt Huntington North is still trying to figure out life without Erin Rethlake. The 2014 graduate, who is 4-0 for Kentucky this season with a team-best 1.65 ERA, pitched the Vikings to four straight regional titles and the Class 4A state championship game in 2012.
But HNHS is a traditionally strong program — it has 17 sectional titles, tied for fifth-most in the state — that is more likely to reload than rebuild.
So regardless of the circumstances, these were big wins against quality opponents. They weren’t victories either team would have necessarily expected when looking at their schedules before their seasons.
Both Patriot teams have proven they’re capable of standing strong against some of the best competition Indiana and Ohio have to offer. The key now is to build off of Monday’s success.
Hopefully there are many big nights on the diamond yet to come.