Commentary: Medina Christian baseball appears to be ahead of schedule

High school programs don't often reach the regional level in their third season as members of the Ohio High School Athletic Association. Fewer still get that far with just one senior on their roster. The Medina Christian baseball team did both. Not only that, the Knights gave a very good account of themselves Tuesday before falling 4-3 in nine innings to Kidron Central Christian in a Division VII, Region 25 semifinal at Oberlin College's Dill Field. "I'm very excited for the future of this program," coach Josh Longsdorf said. "I'm hoping to see it grow and take the next step. I can't wait for next year." Had the Knights (11-6) not given up an unearned run in the top of the sixth or had a runner thrown out at the plate on what looked for all the world like a run-scoring wild pitch, they would be facing powerful Tiffin Calvert (26-2), a 16-5 winner in five innings over Cortland Maplewood (17-10) and the top-ranked team in the Ohio Baseball Coaches Association state poll, in a regional championship game Thursday at 2 p.m. Instead, that honor will go to the Comets (15-10), who beat Medina Christian 12-2 on April 23. "It was not one single play that lost this game," Knights junior catcher D.J. Reidl said. "You win as a team or you lose as a team. I'm excited for next season." Shortstop Daniel Hussey, the lone senior on Medina Christian's roster, will be playing Division III baseball next spring at Asbury University in Kentucky with older brother C.J., who graduated from high school in 2024 when the family lived in New York. Everyone else is back for a program that utilized five freshmen, two sophomores and four very experienced juniors, so the future is definitely bright for the Knights. In many ways, though, next season arrived this season for Medina Christian, which entered Tuesday having outscored its opponents 30-0 in three postseason games. And while Reidl is certainly right that one play doesn't win or lose a game, it's only natural to wonder what might have been had two in particular had a different outcome. The first occurred in the bottom of the third, when Comets pitcher Kye Kooker bounced a fastball past catcher Luke Schrier with two outs and Hussey on third base. Hussey instantly broke for the plate, which is exactly what he should have done in that situation. Yet on a field where baseballs are known to take crazy bounces off the backstop, this one caromed right back to Schrier, who threw to Kooker covering the plate for a very close out. Instead of being up 2-0, the Knights were still clinging to a 1-0 lead. "My immediate thought was anything can happen in this game," Longsdorf said. "You have to accept the good and you have to accept the bad." The Knights had another runner easily thrown out 6-3-2 while trying to score from second on an infield groundout in the fifth, but the way junior left-hander Caden Dyer was throwing, it looked like one run might be enough. In the top of the sixth, however, the Knights were unable to catch a fly ball for the third out, resulting in an unearned run that tied the game. Dyer, who had thrown just 82 pitches through eight innings, was magnificent until tiring in the ninth. Utilizing a lot of off-speed pitches to go along with a well-spotted fastball that reached just 78 mph, Dyer worked both sides of the plate and up and down while giving up just two hits and a walk and retiring the side in order four times over the first eight innings. The Comets, however, got two doubles, a single and two walks in a three-run ninth, with Dyer and reliever Noah Landers facing four batters apiece. Medina Christian could have given up right there, but that's not its style. Instead, Derek Kruszewski and Hussey got one-out singles before Landers belted a two-out double to make it 4-3. Unfortunately for the Knights, Jaxon Longsdorf was called out on strikes to end the extremely fast-paced game. "One more year (of high school baseball) would be awesome," Hussey said, "but I'm excited to continue my career because I'll be playing college baseball with my brother." The Knights' lone senior was doing the same thing throughout a remarkable postseason run, but those brothers weren't blood relatives. "We have a really young team," Hussey said. "We wanted it bad and we took it. We just kept working. We'll keep getting better." Hussey won't be part of the team in 2027, but 11 other players will be back to make more memories that will be recalled at class reunions 10, 20, even 50 years from now. "To see the talent of this team play out was awesome," Reidl said of the postseason. "We knew we could do this." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com.