Albemarle’s baseball team has had two things going for it all season long — chemistry and resilience. The second one got pushed to its limit Tuesday in the Region 5D semifinals.
“The resilience? It’s been that way all year long,” said Albemarle coach Jimmy Bibb. “They could’ve folded, they didn’t fold. It’s just a great bunch of kids.”
The Patriots’ pitchers got out of jam after jam while forcing North Stafford to strand 10 base runners. Meanwhile, Hunter Shifflett and Adam Schantz came up with huge timely hits to lift Albemarle to a 4-3 victory, extending Albemarle’s season and earn a berth in the region title game.
The Patriots will travel to Mountain View Thursday for the Region 5D championship game.
To get there though, they had to survive a bases loaded jam while clinging to a one run lead with the bases loaded. To get out of that? They turned to junior Jason Breen.
Will Coleman had thrown well in relief of starter Alex Bingler who left after his back tightened up but Coleman was tiring out. So Bibb turned to Breen.
“Sometimes you get hunches — everybody on this team has contributed somewhere down the line, it has just been amazing,” Bibb said.
Breen induced a pop up to Alex Duvall in right field and he made a tremendous throw to hold the runner at third. Then Breen forced a ground out to second baseman Ivan Rabinowitz who made the throw to end it and vault the Patriots into the title game.
Schantz’ contribution came in the bottom of the third, when he ripped a single to right field and plated Shifflett and Coleman, putting Albemarle up 3-2 with a single swing after the trailed 2-1. Schantz finished 2-for-3 with three RBI after he had a sac fly to score Shifflett in the bottom of the first.
Shifflett came up big too, pushing the Albemarle lead to 4-2 in the bottom of the sixth for what became the game-winning run. He ripped a double to left and scored Austin Bowen. Shifflett, Coleman and Will Townsed all stole bases for the Patriots. Coleman went 2-for-3 on the night.
The Patriots needing four pitchers and a host of offensive contributions to get over the hump is indicative of their season. Albemarle athletic director Deb Tyson told Bibb and other Albemarle coaches before the season that, in the wake of COVID-19, her main concern was that every student athlete have a great experience. Bibb took that to heart and has gotten more players involved than ever.
“We’ve played so many kids, more than we’ve ever played,” Bibb said. “I just want them to have fun.”
That seems to have helped create some uncommonly good team chemistry which has in turn made the Patriots pretty loose in tough spots like they were against North Stafford.
“They’ll be over there doing something, I’ll get after them and they just say something and I just crack up and walk away,” Bibb said. “They’re so funny.”
Funny, resilient and loose. That’s a pretty good recipe for Albemarle.
