GREELEY — Saturday’s championship was a long time coming for Marc Cowell and his Holy Family Tigers.
The memory of last year’s Class 3A title game defeat at the hand of mighty Eaton still lingered and moreover served as motivation to the senior-laden squad, and it showed not only Saturday, but the last to times the Tigers took the field against the Reds.
Holy Family continued its hot hitting, got a stellar performance on the mound from Cody Simmering and won its first baseball state title with an 11-1 pounding of the Reds at Butch Butler Field.
“I was more worried that we would have to get to that Game 2 and make it a winner-take-all situation,” Cowell said.
The Tigers offense produced 55 runs in the five-game sweep of the tournament, and Saturday everyone in the starting lineup had a hit and six of the nine had two hits.
“We’ve been hot this whole tournament and it’s the two-strike approach and the coaches get a lot of credit for that,” said senior Josh Tinnon, who will continue his baseball at Northern Colorado. “They got us prepared and its definitely contagious those rallies.”
Holy Family (23-2) carried a 2-1 lead to the bottom of the third, when the bats really woke up against Eaton starter Tyler Sieg. Evan Genders led off the inning with a single and a stolen base then came home of Tinnon’s single back up the middle. Seth Urban and Lance Hernandez each walked and that was the end of Sieg’s day.
Reliever Brandon Koehler didn’t fare much better. The sophomore faced the 7-8-9 hitters and gave up a single (Garrett West), double (Will Roth) and a triple (Thomas Lambert) without getting an out.
Simmering didn’t know he’d be starting until last night. He did not let the Reds string together hits and kept the Eaton hitter offbalanced with a nasty slider.
“I’ll tell you what saved me today, was my slider. I had been having trouble with it lately,” Simmering said, “but I think all of my strikeouts with it.”
Jon E. Yunt: 303-954-1354 or jyunt@denverpost.com
