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Balk gives Warhawks Class 5A championship

Seminole rallies to beat St. Thomas Aquinas 5-4 for its first state title.

[Times photos: Toni L. Sandys] Seminole celebrates with the state championship trophy.

By PETE YOUNG

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001

TAMPA -- With all due respect to the original greatest, Muhammad Ali, Seminole must be the greatest.

Saturday at Legends Field, the Warhawks staged an improbable rally from a 4-0, sixth-inning deficit and scored the winner on a bases-loaded balk in the seventh to defeat Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas 5-4 in the Class 5A championship.

Seminole (21-10 with 10 forfeit loses) subsequently staked its claim to arguably the greatest season in high school baseball history. The Warhawks were unbeaten on the field and went wire-to-wire as the nation's No. 1-ranked team by Baseball America. They captured the school's first state baseball title and Pinellas County's first public school title since Lakewood in 1970.

Seminole's Jon Riggleman, left, is met by John Killalea after scoring the winning run.

Whew.

"You want to believe that these guys are going to come back every time, but there's got to be a point where it doesn't happen," Seminole coach Scott Miller said. "We're down to six outs, and we haven't put anything on the board yet.

"I just kept having flashbacks to what these guys have done, and there was not a time where I was not confident that we were going to get back in the game."

The Warhawks overcame a mountain of adversity this season, including forfeiting the first 10 games for using an ineligible player, star shortstop Bryan Bass, and losing No. 1 pitcher and leading hitter Ryan Dixon for six weeks to shoulder surgery, and did so one more time Saturday.

Entering the sixth inning trailing 4-0, Jon Riggleman led off with a walk, and Donyelle Williams grounded into a fielder's choice. Jon Skorupski followed with a bloop double, and then Casey Kotchman laced the first delivery from Jay Lawrence down the rightfield line for a two-run double to make it 4-2 and chase Lawrence, who was replaced by Mike Gulla.

Bobby Wilson reached on an error, and Errol Blumer looped a single to left to score Kotchman.

After a walk to John Killalea, Phil Stillwell lifted a fly ball to rightfield. Wilson tagged up to tie it at 4.

In the seventh, Riggleman led off with a single. Two outs later Kotchman doubled to left with Riggleman holding at third. Wilson was intentionally walked to load the bases. Before Gulla's first delivery to Blumer, he balked. Riggleman skipped down the third-base line with the go-ahead run. Aquinas did not dispute the call.

In the bottom of the seventh, Aquinas got runners on first and second. But on Killalea's 112th pitch, he induced a 4-6-3 double play, Riggleman to Stillwell to Kotchman, to win the title. Aquinas (30-5), ranked No. 8 nationally, took a 2-0 lead in the third. Jimmy Bacon led off with double. Robert Rivera then bunted. Kotchman fielded it and tried to get Bacon at third, but he beat the throw. Consecutive run-scoring singles made it 2-0, and after a sacrifice bunt, Killalea escaped further damage by getting back-to-back strikeouts.

In the fourth, Aquinas stretched it to 4-0 on three singles and a double. Killalea (11-0), who struck out 10, again minimized the damage by getting strikeouts for the final two outs. "I'm sure these guys don't understand fully what just happened to them; as I probably don't," Miller said. "But when you take the field 31 times and don't get beat. ... There always has been a stumbling block somewhere along the line. This club, this year, it just didn't happen."

"You can't control what people write," Kotchman said of the team's preseason accolades. "But it's nice that we backed it up as a team."

Added Killalea: "No one can touch us."

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