Lake Braddock Drops State Tournament Opener

Lake Braddock baseball coach Jody Rutherford can see both sides of the argument.

On one hand, he says, the Bruins had a great season: they played in the district finals, the regional finals and made it to the state playoffs.

But on the other hand, they didn’t win any of those games, so the season left something to be desired.

Lake Braddock had a chance to win each of those games – the Patriot District championship (a 5-3 loss to South County), the Northern Region championship (a 9-5 loss to South County) and the state tournament quarterfinals (a 5-4, extra-inning loss to Great Bridge) – and had the lead against South County in each of those championship games, but couldn’t close them out.

“Our seniors that have worked so hard in the program got to play in some very competitive games. On that side of it, I’m happy for them,” Rutherford said Wednesday afternoon by phone. “But when you look back, you can say we didn’t win any championships and we didn’t move on past the first round of the state tournament. That’s a disappointment.”

The Bruins finished 21-6 and were one of the few teams that gave undefeated South County consistently tough games. Just 15 runs separated the teams over four games. Aside from the Stallions, the only other teams that beat Lake Braddock were St. John’s, in an early season  game, and Great Bridge, which took an early 2-1 lead only to see the Bruins tie the game in the seventh and force extra innings on Tuesday night.

Four-year starter and Washington Post player of the year Kenny Towns started the game for Lake Braddock and only lasted two innings. He left with Great Bridge leading 3-1. Rutherford said Towns, bound for the University of Virginia, didn’t have his best command. Towns was replaced by Nathan Parker, a junior who only began pitching late in the season after fighting back from an injury, who went three solid innings, giving up one run in the fifth. Michael Church threw two shut-out innings to set up the Bruins’ comeback, which was capped by Andrew Weidinger’s game-tying sacrifice fly in the seventh.

Great Bridge had a chance to win the game in the bottom of the seventh, loading the bases with one out, but Church recorded a strikeout and a deep fly-out to end the threat. The Bruins couldn’t push across any runs in the eighth before Great Bridge’s Steven Dudley drove in the game-winner in the bottom of the frame with two outs.

Rutherford said he thought the Bruins were a couple of early hits away from knocking Great Bridge starter Connor Jones out of the game early. Instead he induced some key ground balls and got out of the jams and pitched into the sixth.

“For the most part, we were hitting hard ground balls at guys all night long,” Rutherford said.

Rutherford, who has been involved in the Lake Braddock program for a dozen years, said he’s looking forward to putting on some camps this summer to cultivate the next generation of Bruins’ baseball players. But at the same time, he’s looking forward to seeing what the returning players can do next year.

The Bruins will have pitchers Church, Parker, Daniel Napier and Thomas Rogers coming back next year, along with a group of young infielders like Mitch Spille, Dylan O’Connor and Alex Lewis. They’ll also have starters Alex Gransback (outfield) and catcher Garrett Driscoll who will have had the experience of playing in big games.

“We started five and sometimes six sophomores or younger, so those guys experienced a lot, and they’ll be able to fall back on that next year when they get into pressure situations,” Rutherford said.

But it will be hard to replace seniors Towns, Ryan Owens, Michael Quinteros and Weidinger, who not only provided stability, but offensive punch.

“We’ll struggle to replace their bats and of course Kenny on the mound,” Rutherford said. “Every year Kenny has amazed me with how much better he got. It was a pretty impressive year. … Since I’ve been at Lake Braddock, he’s the best pure hitter we’ve had.”