O-M’s season comes to a close

MILO – Orient-Macksburg’s season came to close at the hands of Class 1A No. 5 Southeast Warren Saturday night, losing 12-0 to the Warhawks in five innings of play in the opening round of the Class 1A District 15 playoffs.

The Bulldogs opened play in the top of the first with a one-out single off the bat of Blake Thompson. His early single was the only hit O-M was able to muster en route to the loss.

With possibly the toughest test of the season for O-M coming in its opening round playoff draw, head coach Drew Dornack told his team that there was only an upside to playing a team that entered Saturday 25-5.

“I told them at the beginning of the game that we have nothing to lose, but everything to gain,” said Dornack. “Just to go out and play and have fun and work hard. We took risks on the basepaths early on that we hadn’t taken all year to try and plate some runs and unfortunately they made some plays where we didn’t get them across.”

Aggressive baserunning and secondary leads led to Bulldog baserunners being picked off three times, including a strong throw from SEW’s catcher behind Jase Davidson to get him leaning too far off second base in the second inning.

On the mound, Thompson’s efforts were backed by his head coach with the upmost confidence.

“Somebody had told us that they kind of struggled with an off-speed kind of guy earlier in the season,” said Dornack. “... I just told him to kind of mixed up his pitches and to be smart about his spots. Their leadoff hitter is hitting phenomenal ... we just kind of went after them and I had confidence in Blake.”

Thompson allowed six hits, but walked eight Warkhawks batters. Five walked batters came around to score.

On top of Thompson having the only hit, he also had a stolen base. Wiley Ray, Zayden Rawlings and Jase Davidson had walks in the game also.

The difficulty of working with 10 players in a 27-game season was made easy for Dornack as the players were flexible and dedicated from opening day to the season ending loss.

“The kids made it very easy. They came to work every single day a week and battled,” said Dornack. “Some of the scores against some teams that we gave up, you would have thought we would have been done in three. To only give up 12 runs tonight against these guys ... it’s something we can build on for next year.”

Orient-Macksburg loses Carson Thompson and Christian Gist due to graduation for next season.

The Bulldogs cap off their regular season with a 1-26 record, going 0-17 in the Bluegrass Conference.

Southeast Warren 12, Orient-Macksburg 0 (5)

R  H  E

OM  000  00  —  0  1  2

SEW  370  2x  —  12  6  0

Orient-Macksburg: Blake Thompson 1K 8BB and Chase Walker. Southeast Warren: Brock Kyner 1K 1BB, Cade Nelson 3K 2BB, Colby Page 3K and Colby Page, Jeffrey Oakley . W — Kyner (9-0). L – Thompson (1-8). HR —none. 3B – none. 2B — SEW: Kaleb Bauer. RBI — SEW: Mason Merfeld, Cade Nelson, Tanner Dierking, Lane Dittmer, Brock Manser, Bryce Hall, Bauer.