The Ontario Community Pep Rally to support the Warriors baseball team before it departs for the Final Four will take place on Wednesday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Marshall Park bandshell in Ontario.
ONTARIO — Mike Ellis couldn’t put his finger on it, but Ontario’s second-year coach knew something was missing as the Warriors sleep-walked through the regular season.
Whatever it was, Ontario has found it during a magical postseason run.
That the Warriors (16-14) will play in a Division II state semifinal game Friday afternoon at Akron’s Canal Park doesn’t come as a complete shock to Ellis. After all, he welcomed back a nine lettermen and eight starters from a team that was 15-6 last spring.
Last year’s success didn’t translate, however, as the Warriors opened the season with four straight losses. A five-game skid in early-April left Ontario with a 3-9 record just past the midway point of the regular season.
“If you would have told me we would be (in the state semifinals) on the first day of practice, I wouldn’t have been surprised,” Ellis said Tuesday afternoon. “With the guys I had coming back, I knew we had a lot of talent.
“But for whatever the reason, it just didn’t click for us during the regular season.”
Part of the reason for Ontario’s slow start was a loaded non-conference schedule. The Warriors played Sandusky Perkins, Wynford, Madison, Hillsdale, Fredericktown and Triway in the first half of the season, going 1-5 against some of the premier programs in the area.
“The talent was there, but we were waiting for something to flip the switch. We had a lot of ups-and-downs early,” Ellis said. “As we look back now, a lot of things contributed to our slow start. We loaded our schedule and we had to get people to accept their roles.
“It was like a roller-coaster.”
Ontario was seeded eighth in the 12-team Fremont district tournament and rightly so, Ellis said. At the time of the tournament draw, the Warriors were still below .500.
They played like a sub-.500 team in their sectional opener against 11th-seeded Sandusky. Ontario trailed the Blue Streaks 3-1 with two out in the bottom of the seventh only to walk it off on Jake Chapman’s run-scoring single for a 4-3 victory.
“In that first tournament game, we’re down 3-1 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh and I’m at third base and I said to myself, ‘I can’t believe our season is over with the type of talent we had,’ ” Ellis said. “We found a way to win and it was like a light went off.”
Ontario needed extra innings to knock off second-seeded Perkins 6-5 in the sectional championship game, avenging a season-opening loss to the Pirates. The revenge tour continued in the district tournament, where the Warriors beat Shelby in the semifinals and Clyde in the finals. Ontario was 0-2 against the Whippets in Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference play and lost to the Fliers in the final game before the tournament started.
By the time the Warriors reached last week’s Bowling Green regional, the Jeckyll-and-Hyde regular season was in the rearview mirror and fading fast. Ontario beat St. Marys Memorial in the semifinals then dispatched tradition-rich Defiance 7-3 to reach the state tournament for the second time in program history and first time since winning the Division III state crown in 1994.
“We played well against Perkins in the sectional final and in each game since then, we’ve played better and better,” Ellis said. “By the time we got to Defiance, I thought we played our best game of the year.
“To win a regional title and beat a great program like Defiance, it gave the boys confidence.”
Pitcher Peyton Dzugan agreed. Dzugan surrendered just four hits in the complete-game win over Defiance.
“I don’t think we’ve fully grasped what it means to reach the state tournament yet, but we’re excited to be here,” Dzugan said. “We didn’t expect it with the way the regular season went.
“If I’m being honest, I’d say we thought we would be eliminated in the second round against Perkins.
“When we beat Defiance, we got a lot more confident. But we want to keep the same underdog mentality we’ve had for the past few weeks.”
The Warriors will again be the underdogs Friday afternoon. Ontario’s semifinal opponent, Washington Court House, is 27-1 and has won 26 straight games.
The Blue Lions are coming off a run rule-shortened 10-0 regional final win over Cambridge in which pitchers Will Miller and A.J. Dallmayer combined on a six-inning no-hitter.
Washington Court House’s ace, Titus Lotz, is committed to Bowling Green but Lotz left the Blue Lions’ regional semifinal win over Bloom-Carroll with an elbow injury after facing just two batters. Tanner Lemaster came on in relief of Lotz and went the distance in the 4-2 win.
“They have got a deep and talented pitching staff,” Ellis said. “You don’t win 26 games in a row by accident.”
Not surprisingly, the community has embraced the Warriors’ unlikely run to the state semifinals.
“It’s just awesome when you’ve got a community like ours that is willing to come out and support us,” Dzugan said. “It’s hard to block out all the distractions, but I don’t want to ignore them. It’s a great thing and something not a lot of people get to experience.
“We’re trying to soak it all in.”
