SPANISH FORK — Bear River coach Clay Chournos knew his team was up against a Herculean task. It needed to win eight straight games to claim the 3A state title after losing in the first round to Delta. The Bears took the ultimate sports cliche and did just that.
"We just took it one game at a time," Chournos said. "We knew we could beat anyone in just one game, so we looked at it that way and here we are."
Their final destination? The school's first-ever baseball title after winning three games in one day, including a 6-2 triumph over Cedar in the title game.
The Bears had to beat Carbon in an early morning contest just for the chance to play Cedar. Jason Zundel threw a complete game and tallied five RBIs to get his team past that challenge.
Cedar, meanwhile, hadn't lost a game in tournament play before Saturday, which mean Bear River needed to beat the Redmen twice in one afternoon. In the opening game, Saje Hurd threw six innings and held Cedar to only three runs. Bear River scored two unearned runs, and Brady Fronk had an RBI single. Mitch Ramsdell singled in a run and picked up the save to force a winner-take-all afternoon contest.
In high school rules, a pitcher may only throw 14 innings in a week. That creates quite a problem when a team needs to win seven games in that span. Following Ramsdell's one-inning save in the first game, he had five innings he could pitch in the finale.
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"Between games we were discussing what we were going to do with the pitching situation," Chournos said. "Mitch came up to me and he flat out said 'give me the ball.' You can't say enough about him. Talk about a kid that just guts it up."
Ramsdell was masterful. In five innings, he surrendered only one run on a Braden Yardley RBI single. He gave up five hits while striking out four and did not allow an extra-base hit.
"I knew I had to go out and get it done. I had the confidence I needed that we could do it," he said.
The Bears started slowly on offense. They had only one hit through four innings, but they had scored an unearned run in the third. It was a two-out rally in the fifth inning that won them a championship.
Brady Fronk reached on a fielder's choice, and Ramsdell followed that with a single. Zundel hit a line-drive single that scored Fronk, and Tyrell Marble hit a triple all the way to the right-center wall to score Ramsdell and Fronk. He would later score on a blown run-down by Cedar. With a 5-1 lead, Ramsdell turned over the closing duties to Zundel, who gave up one hit and one run to pick up the two-inning save.
"I knew I was going to go in and pitch," Zundel said. " I just tried to throw strikes and knew my defense could do it."
The baseball championship completes an amazing year for Bear River. The Bears won a state title in football, placed third at state in basketball, and, after a long, hard week, capped it off with a baseball crown.
"Our theme this year was: compete. This past week, they proved they could do that," Chournos said. "You can't say enough about this group of kids. They work their guts out all year. Seven of the nine are three-sport athletes."
E-mail: mblack@desnews.com