Old Colony baseball season isn’t quite done yet, but the Cougars’ shot at making a run in the MIAA Division 4 South Sectional tournament is at an end following their 7-0 to No. 6 Cohasset in Monday’s quarter finals matchup.
The third-ranked Cougars fell behind 2-0 in the first inning, which the Skippers turned into a 3-0 lead by the end of the second. Old Colony pitcher Nick Hedlundand the defense settled in from there, but the Cougars offense simply couldn’t figure out Cohasset starting pitcher George Grech. Matt Bumpusand Jacob Wordenwere the old two Cougars with base hits.
“We got beat by a good baseball team,” Old Colony coach Craig Lincoln said. “If you don’t hit the ball, you don’t score runs – you don’t win games. It’s that simple. We talk about the mathematics of the game. Mathematically, they beat us today.”
As the Cougars tried to fight their way back, Hedlund ran into a little predicament in the seventh inning after the Skippers had already scored their fourth run of the game in the sixth frame. It seemed he was going to work his way out of a jam, but when a call didn’t go Old Colony’s way, Cohasset capitalized for three more runs to make it 7-0.
“Kind of fell apart a little bit,” Lincoln said. “More worried about blue instead of worrying about black. We talk about worrying about black and gold, control – what we can control. We lost our minds for a few minutes and talked about just getting our minds back together and getting ready for the vocational tournament and having the ability to win at the end of the season, which most of the time doesn’t happen for us.”
Now the Cougars await their matchup with McCann Tech in the State Vocational Final. No date has been set yet, but Old Colony will have to hit the road to play their western Massachusetts opponent.
Looking toward the future, the Cougars won a game in the South Sectional tournament and could potentially win two State Vocational Tournament games after going winless in the postseason in 2018. Having won their sixth-consecutive Mayflower Small Vocational Division title in 2019, the Cougars (15-5) want to maintain their development in 2020.
“Keeping these guys hungry and making sure [they’re] staying mentally focused from beginning to end,” Lincoln said on what needs to be the team’s focus going forward. “You have a team that started out as a bunch of sophomores last year that now, over the course of two years, has won 31 games. Pretty good.
“Helping them understand we’re not just trying to win a conference championship, we want to be successful in the postseason,” Lincoln continued. “And we kind of got the monkey off our back in both tournaments [by] getting a win in both tournaments this year. So [we will] continue to make strides with this group and hopefully keep the younger guys understanding what it’s going to take to keep the program going as we move forward.”
High School Sports Update
By Nick Friar