By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline baseball team will kick off postseason play on Monday with an approximate 4:00 first pitch against the winner of 5-13 Smoky Valley and 1-19 Nickerson.
This quarterfinal matchup, likely against a Vikings team the Trojans defeated twice back in April, will set Southeast off on another quest for an elusive ticket to the state tournament, something SES hasn’t acquired since 2003.
The Trojans will enter this year’s Halstead regional as the 1-seed with the best record in the bracket at 16-4, but this year’s field, much like is absolutely loaded.
“It’s a tough bracket and we’ve known how good 3A is all season,” SES head coach Mike Garretson said. “We know we have a tough road ahead but every time we’ve taken the field we’ve felt that we can and should win and we’ll take that same mentality into the postseason.”
Southeast played exceptionally well down the stretch, splitting with Ellsworth to secure a share of the league title and winning eight of their last nine games to close out the regular season.
“We’re playing pretty confident baseball as of late,” Garretson said. “In our last doubleheader we only committed one error and we had just one at Ellsworth before that. Our pitchers aren’t walking a lot of guys and that’s been our calling card all season.”
Despite all the talent the Trojans bring to the table, SES knows that they will need to be on their game all week in the traditional win-or-go-home regional playoff format.
“It’s single elimination high school baseball and it’s certainly stressful,” he said. “Sometimes you expect a pitchers duel and the game ends up 10-9, sometimes you expect a high scoring game and it winds up 1-0. At the end of the day you just have to be a little bit better than your opponent”
Assuming Nickerson’s second win of the season doesn’t come in a colossal playoff upset, the Trojans will see Smoky Valley for a third time this season, and the Vikings certainly have an ace up their sleeve.
Junior southpaw Kade Blanchat struck out 18 batters, walked just four and allowed only a single run through his first nine innings of work this season.
In a 2-1 loss to the Trojans in early April Blanchat held SES without a single earned run and fanned 11 in 5.2 of work.
“He’s a lefty with good velocity who mixes up his pitches really well and gets everything over,” Garretson said. “He throws a good curve and a solid cutter and he has a really good mound presence. We’ll have to be on our game to get to him and to find out what they have in their bullpen.”
First pitch between SES and Smoky Valley or Nickerson is set for approximately 4 pm with the winner advancing to the regional semifinals to take on 12-8 Halstead or 10-8 Hesston on Tuesday.
For continuing coverage of Trojan baseball all postseason stay tuned to the Salina Post.