The No. 1 seed Roadrunner Baseball team faced the usual case of opening-game jitters when they squared off against No. 8 seed St. Cloud Tech in Saturday's first-round game of the NJCAA Division III World Series at Pioneer Park in Greeneville, TN,
But in stepped sophomore sluggers Aaron Graeber and Rocko Brzezniak to the rescue as they knocked in a combined 3 runs to lift the Runners past the Cyclones 5-3 to advance to the second round of the championship bracket.
Coach Rob Valli's team, who won their 50th game of the 2023 campaign, will meet the winner of the No. 5 North Essex vs. No. 4 Joliet game that was postponed until Sunday due to rain. The RCSJ second-round game date and time will be announced by tourney officials.
The Runners jumped out to a quick 3-1 first inning lead off of Cyclones' starter Christian Lessman. Graeber tripled in a run to tie it at 1-1 while Brzezniak and Cole Fowler followed with a triple and single respectively to score two more runs.
But Lessman slammed the door, hurling five straight scoreless innings -- while his teammates tied the score at 3-3 with runs in the second and fifth innings thanks to a pair of RBIs by Cayden Hansen.
"Their pitcher was much tougher than we expected," said Brzezniak. "After the first inning he really bore down on our hitters and kept getting us out. But we knew we weren't going to be stopped altogether -- we came up with the big hits when we needed to."
View Game Photos (courtesy of Kelly Fowler)
The Runners finally got back on top as Graeber slammed his second RBI triple, scoring Sean Brown in the seventh and Felix Diaz bounced a single through the left side foe the final of 5-3.
"This was a tough first-round game, but good teams win these kind of games -- and we want to show we're the best team in the country," said Graeber. "We just kept to our routines and had faith in the guys in our lineup."
Three Roadrunner pitchers -- Kevin Opanel, Danny Kerr and Tim Hartman -- combined to shut down the Cyclones over 9 innings. Hartman emerged the winner with 4 1/3 innings of solid work, allowing no earned runs and scattering 5 hits.
"It was great to get the first-game jitters out of the way," said Brzezniak. "We're a confident group now and we'll be ready for anything."
