C-M ousted from Series

John Coscia

Monday, Aug. 26, 2002 | 10:52 a.m.

DANVILLE, Va. -- The stakes were high for Cimarron-Memorial and its opponent, Excelsior, Minn., in Sunday night's final American Legion World Series pool play game here -- winner moves on, loser goes home.

Excelsior rallied with three runs in the seventh inning to erase a 2-0 Cimarron lead and post a 3-2 victory that eliminated the Las Vegas team from further competition.

"We had one tough inning where everything landed right where they hit it," said Cimarron coach Doug Russell, whose team won its opener but lost its next two in pool play. "We did as well as advertised: We can pitch, we can't hit. We couldn't get a run."

Both teams played like they understood what was on the line. Excelsior's Geoff Bray and Cimarron's Paul Schmidt dueled like heavyweight fighters with neither pitcher yielding a run over the first three innings. In fact, they only allowed one hit each during that span.

But in the fourth inning, the Las Vegas bats came alive for a 2-0 lead.

Jared Johnson led off with a single to right center and Matthew Wagner doubled down the left field line to score Johnson. Wagner moved to third on a throwing error and scored when Allan Woodward singled to center field. Woodward advanced to second on the throw home but was stranded there.

It was a stranded runner that would loom big.

At the time, it seemed like two runs might as well have been 20, given the way Schmidt was mowing down the Excelsior batters. Over the next three innings Schmidt allowed only one hit. But in the seventh inning everything changed.

Marcus McKenzie led off the inning off with an infield single and Sean Kommerstad doubled to right center driving home McKenzie. Jeff Engel reached on an infield single that moved Kommerstad to third. He scored when Tom Policano singled through the right side.

Engel advanced to third on a ground ball out and scored what proved to be the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Jake Williams.

"Give them all the credit in the world. They got the hits when they needed them," Russell said.

"Schmidt pitched awesome. He was at 55 pitchers through six. We still feel like we had the pitching to actually win this thing. I know we were deeper than anybody in pitching here."

"We are known for our pitching, we've had 15 (NCAA) Division I pitchers in the last four years."

The loss notwithstanding, Russell was proud of what the team accomplished this summer. Cimarron packed its bags with a 45-11 record.

The Spartans were just the fifth Las Vegas team to qualify for the World Series. Cimarron opened the eight-team tournament with a 4-0 victory over Medford, Ore., before losing to Rapid City, S.D., 6-2 on Saturday.

In today's seminfinals, Dothan, Ala., will face Excesior and Rapid City will square off against West Point, Miss. The title game is Tuesday.