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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
The Rochester 8-and-under baseball team won the Town and Country state championship in Sweetser Sunday with a 6-2 win over Greentown. Front, from left – Dawson Darling, Dayne Gick, Gates Newton, Liam Day, Easton Troutman, Easton Holloway. Middle – Mavrik Halterman, Carson Enyart, Jude Brown, Howie Day, Maddox McLochlin. Back – coaches Marcus Halterman, Dave Baillieul, Kyle McLochlin. (photo provided)
The last time the Rochester Town and Country 8-and-under baseball team won the state championship in 2014, the team had players like Tanner Reinartz and Brady Beck.
Ten years later, Reinartz and Beck were among the key players on the Rochester High School team that advanced to the semistate.
And 10 years later, the next generation of young stars won the first state title since the 2014 team when they defeated Greentown 6-2 in Sweetser on Sunday.
The team, which is an All-Star team consisting of 10 players, went 13-0 – 5-0 at Districts, 4-0 at semistate and 4-0 at state.
Marcus Halterman coaches the team. Kyle McLochlin and Dave Baillieul help with the coaching.
Their selflessness stands out, according to McLochlin.
“They just don’t care who does what, who scores the game-winning run, who makes the play,” McLochlin said. “They just want that to happen, and they want to win. I can’t say enough about them.”
Town and Country games are six innings long. Pitching machines which are set to throw at 37 miles per hour are used in 8-and-under baseball. If a batter fails to put the ball in play within five pitches, he is out. There are no walks.
The pitching machine means that there is an even greater emphasis on defense.
“This team is rock solid defensively,” McLochlin said. “The thing that blows me away is starting at semistate, we had a close game with Lapel of 9-6. After that game, we outscored teams 16-1, 2-0, 12-1, 8-1, 14-4, 12-2 and 6-2. You’re talking 8-year-olds giving up less than four runs a game on average, OK? It’s unbelievable. It really is.”
There are 10 players playing defense, including four in the outfield and a player standing on the pitching rubber.
“I’ve been around baseball my whole life,” McLochlin said. “I’ve coached it for seven, eight years. I’ve never seen a team that has such a high IQ of knowing what to do with the ball. It’s a tribute to all 10 of those kids just buying in and wanting to be the best they can be every time they take the field.”
McLochlin called coaching the kids “truly rewarding” and said they had “big hearts.” He was asked if the kids are a group of tough competitors or a group of fun-loving kids. He said they are both.
“If you introduce competition to these kids, the more they tasted the winning side of it, the more they wanted to continue to keep doing it,” McLochlin said. “They’re fierce competitors that enjoy playing with each other.”
Town and Country is a youth organization based in smaller towns. McLochlin said that Rochester switched from Little League to Town and Country around 1998 or 1999.
Rochester has two 8-and-under teams – Gold and Black. The team that won state consists almost exclusively of kids on the Gold team.
Districts are akin to sectionals in high school sports. The top five teams in the nine-team district at North Miami advance to the semistate. In that tournament, Rochester beat Plymouth 11-1 in the championship game.
The top five teams at the 10-team semistate, which was held at Manchester, advanced. Rochester again beat Plymouth 12-1 in the championship game.
At the state finals, Rochester started with an 8-1 win over Northwestern on Friday, then beat Lapel 14-4 in four innings and then beat Russiaville 12-2 in four innings before finishing off Greentown for the title.
“Unlike the state finals in (high school) baseball, you are able to lose and win your way back because it’s a double-elimination tournament,” McLochlin said. “But we never got beat. The kids just buckled down and played amazing.”
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