A.C. Flora edged in Forest Acres high school baseball finale

The A.C. Flora Falcons were twice three outs away from winning the Forest Acres Classic championship on Thursday.

Instead, the Kettering (Ohio) Fairmont Firebirds claimed a 10-9 win for the title after eight innings at Flora.

The Falcons finished the tournament 3-1.

“I feel good about our guys,” said A.C. Flora coach Andy Hallett. “They’ve definitely grown up and done some good things. We’ve done just about everything you could do, in this tournament, including playing extra innings.

“So I’m proud of our kids. That’s a good team we played. They’re a strong offensive team, we knew that going in and you could tell with 14 hits.”

The Falcons got 13 hits and were leading 8-6 going into the seventh.

After the Firebirds forced the extra inning, Falcons senior Donald Gillespie smashed a home run high over the center field fence to give Flora a 9-8 lead.

“One is always nice when you’re the visitor,” Hallett said. “But, obviously, we would have really loved to have come back with some more baserunners behind him and put up a crooked number, and make them have to hit the ball instead of bunting guys over.”

Fairmont responded by loading the bases with no outs. The Falcons fielded a left field fly for the first out, then Will Taks struck out Jacob Ryan for the second.

But Jackson Havener was hit by pitch to force in a run, tying the game again. And Knonnor Rose sent home the winning run, hitting into the right field wall.

“They just get a couple of hits and pieced together their runs,” Hallett said. “They don’t really hit the ball really hard against Will but they wind up getting on base and getting the two runs that they needed.”

A.C. Flora got a two-run lead in the first inning, but the Firebirds put up three runs in the bottom of the second to take the lead. The Falcons responded with four runs on five hits to regain the lead, but Fairmont would not stay down.

Hitting in the two-hole, Austin Warden smashed a double, then ran home on Drew Gudgell’s single deep to center field, making it a two-run game. With the tying run on first, the Falcons struck out Ian Short to close the inning with a 6-4 lead after three.

Flora’s Lane Botkin got on with a single to start the fourth, and when the Firebirds overthrew first base on a Bailey Mathews’ single, Botkin crossed and Mathews reached second.

Coleman Pope went to bat with two outs and Mathews on third. Mathews stole home to make it 8-4.

In the bottom of the inning, the Firebirds got two runs across to get back in contention.

This story was originally published April 2, 2015 at 11:35 PM with the headline "A.C. Flora edged in Forest Acres high school baseball finale."