Dow Baseball Wins District Title

The Dow High Baseball Team defended their District title from 2019 by beating Saginaw Heritage in the first round of districts 5-3 and then taking the championship 6-3 vs. Bay City Western.  Trent Johnson pitched 6 1/3 innings vs. Heritage holding the Hawks to 3 runs on 9 hits.  Nolan Sanders came in to get the second out of the 7th inning and then Logan McCoy slammed the door to earn the save with the final out.  Dow was led offensively by Jack Bakus going 2 for 3 with 2 rbi's.  Caleb Brenske was 2 for 3 with a run scored.  

In the Championship game, Caleb Brenske pitched a complete game giving up early runs before settling down and shutting out Western in the final 4 innings.  Brenske struck out 6 batters in the victory.  The big blow offensively was provided by Alex Liakos with a 3 run home run in the top of the 6th to propel the Chargers to a 4-3 lead.  The inning started out with pop out to first and a hard ground ball to third.  With 2 out and nobody on, Bill VanSumeren singled.  That was followed by a strike out by Kowalczyk, but the ball eluded the catcher and everyone was safe putting runners on 1st and 2nd.  Alex Liakos then blasted the 3 run homer to give Dow the lead for good.  Dow would score 2 more runs in the 7th and Brenske blanked  Western in the 7th givnig Dow the championship.

"We played very good baseball today.  We just put together 14 innings of errorless defense to go along with great pitching.  Alex Liakos's homer was just what we needed to wake up a bit.  That was a big blow that turned the championship game in our favor.  I am so proud of our team and how they worked to have us playing our best ball at this time of the year."  Coach Juday commented after the celebration.

Dow (24-14) will travel to Traverse City to play Traverse City West in the first round of the regionals on Wednesday June 9th at 4:00.