Indians Earn State Tournament Berth

By Clint Cox

The Chipola Indians baseball squad has made reservations for Lakeland and the FCCAA State Baseball Tournament. Those reservations could be made after this past Saturday’s 12-3 win over Northwest Florida State College in Niceville. The win clinched the Panhandle Conference runner up spot for Chipola and earned them a berth in the State Tournament. The Indians will open up tournament play on May 6th at 9 am when they take on Palm Beach State. The tournament will take place at Tigertown Stadium, the spring training home of the Detroit Tigers, in Lakeland and run from May 6-10.

Chipola began their final three game Panhandle Conference series on Saturday in Niceville against Northwest Florida State College. Their mission was simple, win one of the last three games and they would clinch the runner up spot. The Indians jumped out to an early 3-0 lead as Eric Sauls went deep for a home run. The Raiders countered with two runs in the bottom of the second inning to pull within one run. But the Indians posted a run in the third and fourth inning to lead 5-2 and that is where the scored stayed for four innings. In the top of the ninth Chipola exploded for 7 runs to put the game away and punch their ticket for Lakeland. Austin Wright was the winning pitcher as he went eight innings giving up two runs on one hit and striking out eleven batters. Sauls was 1-3 with four RBI, Joey Rapp who was 1-3 with two RBI, Andy Fermin who went 3-3 and Josh Allen who was 2-5 with two RBI.

The Raiders bounced back on Monday with a 6-4 win over the Indians. Northwest Florida took a 5-0 lead after two innings and saw the Indians chip away at the lead but never able to take the lead. Michael Revell was 2-4 with one RBI and Sauls and Fermin each recorded home runs.

Chipola, whose record stands at 12-11 in the conference and 25-23 overall, was slated to play Northwest Florida on Wednesday in Niceville for the final conference game of the season. Results of that contest were not available at press time.