The dogpile is on after the Blue Dragons recorded the final out of a 8-7 come-from-behind victory over Garden City in the second championship game of the Region VI Tournament on May 17, 2005.

Region Tournament Championship Game No. 2
Hutchinson 8, Garden City 7
May 17, 2005 - Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, Wichita

BLUE DRAGONS WIN REGION VI,
HEAD TO GRAND JUNCTION
FOR FIRST TIME

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WICHITA – Thirty years is long enough.

That’s how long it has been since the Hutchinson Community College baseball team had won the Region VI Tournament. That’s what freshman outfielder Lindy Wray, whose father played on that 1975 Blue Dragon team, was thinking when he led off the bottom of the eighth inning in a tied Region VI championship game with Garden City May 17, 2005 at Lawrence Dumont Stadium.

Wray hit a solo home run off Preston Reichard in the eighth and Sean Peery delivered 7 1-3 innings of gutsy relief work as Hutchinson rallied from five runs down twice to defeat Garden City 8-7 in the decisive title game.

Hutchinson (37-20) won its second regional title overall and will make its first appearance in the NJCAA World Series ever when the Blue Dragons play New Mexico Junior College at Noon MDT on May 28 at Suplezio Field in Grand Junction, Colo.

In head coach Kyle Crookes’ first season as skipper, he’s led the Blue Dragons to a share of the Jayhawk West championship, a regional tournament top seed and now a regional title. To get there, the Blue Dragons had to defeat Garden City in 5 of 7 meetings this season.

“I’m really, really proud of my kids,” Crookes said. “They believe and they did such a great job of being resilient and coming back all weekend long. That takes a lot of energy and a lot of heart. That’s something that you can’t coach.

“I’m just lucky to have the kind of kids that I have. It’s more of an indication of the kids. Nobody expected them to compete at this level for this long and they wanted to prove people wrong.”

The latest comeback victory was typical of the Blue Dragons throughout the five days in Wichita. The Dragons had 13 come-from-behind wins in the first 51 games. They had four in Wichita alone. HCC trailed in every game, but its first-round victory over Allen County. But that game was tied going into the bottom of the ninth when Luke Naccarato’s single scored Thad Weber to win it.

After that game, the Blue Dragons scored 13 runs in the final three innings of the next five games to come up with improbable comeback after improbable comeback, taking out the likes of Garden City, Cowley College and Butler along the way.

Four of Hutch’s five wins at Lawrence Dumont were by one run; the other was by two runs.

“We were ranked fifth in preseason and we have worked our butts off,” said Peery, the unlikely pitching hero. “We don’t give up. We come back a lot in the late innings, but we don’t give up.”

The decisive championship game was no different. HCC trailed 5-0 after two innings on home runs by Luke Gorsett and Joe Servais off starter Jason Banks. The lead grew to 6-1 before the Dragons started to chip away at Garden City ace Aaron Breit by scoring at least one run in every offensive inning from the fourth inning on.

Hutchinson still trailed 7-5 heading into its half of the seventh when the Dragons tied the game with two runs on no hits and not one ball leaving the infield.

That set up Wray’s heroics in the bottom of the eighth when he hit a 1-1 offering from Reichard over the left-field wall to give HCC an 8-7 lead.

“The first ball they pitched me was a curveball low and the next one was a fastball outside. So I knew they weren’t going to throw me a fastball inside, so I was looking for a curveball and I luckily guessed right and I drove it out of the ballpark,” Wray said. “I was in a slump coming into this tournament and I was bound and determined not to carry it in here. I took a lot of hitting practice and I was just trying to hit that the pitching gave me.”

Perry made Wray’s blast – his second home run of the tournament and his sixth of the season – stand up with a 1-2-3 ninth. But that final inning didn’t come without a major scare from Garden City.

Gorsett, the nation’s home run leader who already had four clouts in the tournament, hammered a Peery pitch to dead center that many thought was out of the park. But Andy Dirks, with his back against the ball and the 400-foot marker right above his head, made the catch. After that, Andy Preston grounded out to Naccarato at third and Luke Dreiling lined out to second baseman Brandon Doherty, setting off a wild Blue Dragon celebration.

“It was a good thing that we have a big enough park to hold it in center field because that ball was hammered,” Peery said of Gorsett’s drive in the ninth. “If it would have been hit anywhere to the left of the scoreboard it would have been out of here by a mile with that wind. All of this what we’ve done takes hard work and ability, but it takes some luck. The balls bounced our way.”

Overshadowed by the comeback was the performance of Peery, a freshman right-hander who hadn’t pitched in three weeks. He took over for a struggling Banks, who was going on three days rest after throwing more than 130 pitches against Allen County on Friday.

Peery allowed single runs in the fifth and seventh innings, but other than that, the freshman from Highlands Ranch, Colo., kept the powerful Broncbuster offense off balance. Peery allowed two runs on five hits, but struck out five and walked only two.

“Low and behold another hero,” Crookes said. “Peery hasn’t thrown in the whole tournament. He comes out and shuts the door the rest of the way. He has that kind of stuff and we are lucky to have him to use in that situation.”

Garden City outhit HCC 10-9 and the Dragons had only one extra-base hit, Wray’s homer. Freshman Todd Schonhoff, making his second start of the tournament in left, was 3 for 4 with an RBI, while Wray was 2 for 4 with two runs scored and three driven in. Five different Dragons drove in runs.

Garden City, one of the teams that shared the Jayhawk West title with Hutchinson, took charge early with power. Gorsett crushed a two-run homer in the first, and then Servais hit a wind-aided three-run shot in the second for a 5-0 Buster lead. Banks, who threw more than 50 pitches in 1 1-2 innings, was relieved by Peery in the second inning.

The Dragons finally got on the board in the fourth. After a Noah Krol leadoff walk, he advanced to third on two wild pitches and scored on Wray’s groundout to third. The Busters answered in the top of the fourth on a Curtis Smith sacrifice fly for a 6-1 lead. HCC added one run in the fifth when Torey Williams scored on a Dirks’ groundout and finally broke through against Breit in the sixth.

Krol, Weber, Wray and Schonhoff started the fourth with consecutive singles. Wray and Schonhoff’s singles pushed across runs and a Naccarato sacrifice fly trimmed the Buster lead to 6-5.

“This is about the most resilient team that I have ever seen,” Crookes said. “I don’t think that there was a whole lot of doubt that we would start to chip away, especially after the way Sean (Peery) started throwing. They kept chipping away and chipping away and we started to get some opportunities and we came up with big hits from a lot of kids.”

Garden City’s Dreiling led off the seventh with a solo homer to give Garden City a 7-5 lead, but the never-say-die Dragons kept battling back.

The bizarre HCC seventh started with Doherty getting hit with a pitch and Dirks walking. Andrew Prignitz moved them both up 90 feet with a sacrifice bunt, but the Busters loaded the bases when Reichard hit Krol with a pitch. Weber then hit into a 5-4 fielder’s choice, but Doherty and Dirks hustled to both score on the play. Dirks was safe at home when Servais couldn’t handle the throw from Preston that would have been in time.

The Busters looked to have something going in the eighth when Perry plunked leadoff hitter Ryan Urzendowski with a pitch. After Smith struck out, Williams, HCC’s catcher, threw out Urzendowski while he was trying to steal second. Servais flied out to Wray in right to end the inning.

Wray led off the eighth with a solo homer to give the Dragons an 8-7 lead and Peery retired the side in the ninth to end the game.