SECTIONAL BASEBALL
Panthers end with rout at home
North baseball team won't be back to play on 'The Hill,' but they will return to sectional play Friday.
PHOTOS: View photos from the game and the 2008 season
Thursday, May 15, 2008
SPRINGFIELD — Doug Stoll took one last look around the field. They call North High School's baseball field "The Hill," and Stoll paused to reflect on a near lifetime spent on the diamond.
The drizzle didn't wet his eyes. Tears did.
North players Jordan Moore (center) and Jimmy Powell come to the aid of Jake Ceyler, who slipped on the wet grass while attempting to field a fly ball during North's final home game against Fairborn on Wednesday, May 14. North won the game 17-4. "I don't want to go home," said Stoll, a 1976 North graduate who has been his brother Mark's assistant coach for 21 seasons. "This is home."
Minutes later, North head coach Mark Stoll ushered his players out the gate and locked up the field. The Panthers will return today, May 15, for practice, but there will be no more home games for Stoll after 25 seasons at the helm and there will be no more home games for the Panthers after 48 seasons.
North left as victors. The No. 4 seed Panthers beat No. 7 seed Fairborn 17-4 in five innings Wednesday in a Division I sectional semifinal.
North trailed 4-0 after the first half-inning, but it came back to score 10 runs in the bottom of the inning to begin the rout. North's senior starting pitcher Mitch Monke left after not recording an out, and senior Joey Borders stepped in to pitch the rest of the game.
North (20-8) takes a five-game winning streak into a 6:45 p.m. sectional final Friday against Vandalia Butler (15-13) at Carleton Davidson Stadium, and Borders has won four of those games.
"I really wasn't that prepared to pitch today," Borders said. "Mentally, I was. Physically, I really wasn't, but you do what you have to do."
Down 4-0, Mark Stoll said to his players, "Don't panic."
A lead-off single by Jordan Moore in the bottom of the first started the hit barrage. Jake Ceyler doubled in two runs in the inning. Devon Lenz, playing despite a stomach ailment, scored one of the runs after almost bowling over Mark Stoll in the third-base coach's box on the way to home plate.
All in all, it was a fitting end for the Panthers on their home field.
"It did not hit me until that last out," Mark said.
After the game, Mark asked the North fans to join his team on the pitcher's mound to sing the fight song one more time. Later, he sat down in the dugout — freshly painted Springfield High School Wildcat blue in preparation for the coming merger of North and South — and pondered a career on The Hill.
"I love doing what I do," Mark said. "There's not a day in all the years I've been here that I haven't looked forward to coming up over that hill with these kids."
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0351 or djablonski@coxohio.com.
