WELLSVILLE — For the second year in a row, the Humboldt baseball team’s season was ended at the hands of Wellsville. The Eagles beat the Cubs 8-3.
The Eagles have been the Cubs’ nemesis for the last 12 months, regardless of sport. After eliminating them from the state baseball tournament last year, they also ended Humboldt’s basketball season this year.
The Cubs came into the game fired up to extract their revenge on the Eagles and their added emotion may have worked to their detriment early on, as Wellsville scored three first-inning runs off of Humboldt’s senior ace Jake Haviland.
“If they allowed redos I’d love to redo that first inning, Jake was so jacked up and ready to compete,” Coach Mike Miller said. “He loves to compete. He was just overexcited.”
Working with a lead, Dougan quickly settled into the game for the Eagles. Dougan had his issues with control throughout the game allowing five walks, but also was very difficult to hit according to Miller.
“We haven’t seen anything like him,” Miller said.
Dougan and Haviland will be teammates next season at Allen Community College and they will also be joined by Tony’s brother Andy.
When the Cubs were able to get on base against Dougan, he was able to stay out of trouble by stranding 10 Cub runners.
“We had opportunities throughout the game,” Miller said.
After the first inning, Haviland settled into the game and had scoreless innings in the second, third and fourth. Humboldt cut the score to 3-1 with a run in the third and seemed to be building momentum.
That momentum was halted in the fifth inning when on a Tragen Smith single to left field, the Cubs committed two errors on the play and allowed a runner to score from first and Smith scampered all the way to third. A Dougan single one batter later drove in Smith and Wellsville took a 5-1 lead.
“They are a good ball team and they make you pay when you make mistakes,” Miller said.
The Eagles tacked on three more runs in the seventh to essentially end the game.
Humboldt kept fighting though and came back with two runs in the seventh to make the final margin 8-3. Miller says the character of his team was on display with the way they fought until the end.
“If we were going to go down, we were going down swinging,” Miller said.
After the team huddled and met in the outfield after the game, Miller kept his seniors in the huddle as the underclassmen headed back to the dugout.
