SIJHSAA Regional Finals: DMS Baseball Warriors Back to State
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Defending state champion Du Quoin (Middle School) punched its ticket for a return trip to the Southern Illinois Junior High School Athletic Association (SIJHSAA) Elite Eight Tuesday, winning the Class L Region III regional.
The Warriors, 20-3, short-gamed Johnston City 12-2 at Broy Field in West Frankfort, and will advance to play Murphysboro at 9:30 a.m. Saturday in Pinckneyville.
The Blue Devils lost a pair of regular season games to the Warriors by 15-4 and 6-5 scores.
Johnston City lost in the regional finals for the second straight year against DMS and finished 17-5.
"It was a little dicy there early and Johnston City is a good team," Warriors coach Tim Craft said. "But I thought we stayed composed and had some very good at bats. The bottom of the order was great again and the other kids just fed off that."
DMS drew first blood, scoring once in the opening inning.
Camdon Mercier led off the game with a double off the leftfield fence. He promptly scored on A.J. Smith's single to rightfield for a quick 1-0 lead.
The inning would end in frustration, however, as the Warriors couldn't score again as Smith retired on a strikeout-throw out double play at third base to end the frame.
Du Quoin's 1-0 edge didn't last long. Mercier surrendered three walks and j'City plated a pair of unearned tallies after two DMS errors to grab a 2-1 advantage.
The tables quickly turned on Johnston City as the Warriors went ahead to stay with a four-run outburst. Kody Hess and Dalton Bigham singled to start the rally and Brenden Shepard was hit by a pitch.
A walk to Jacob Valier tied the score with a free pass to Mercier putting Du Quoin in front for good.Smith's RBI grounder stretched the lead to 5-2.
"I like the way we bounced back after the first inning," Craft said. "That's really the first time in quite awhile we've had an inning like that. Camden (Mercier) did a good job of pitching out of trouble. We really settled down after that."
Mercier would fire blanks at Johnston City the rest of the way and ended with a one-hitter. He struck out five and walked four.
In the fifth, DMS would end things early. A seven-run uprising included seven hits and a pair key Johnston City errors.
Shepard, Valier, Hess and Noah Campbell all had run-scoring hits during the fray. Youngman blasted an RBI triple to deep leftfield as 11 Warriors went to the plate.
Hess, Bigham and Youngman all enjoyed two-hit games with Smith knocking in three runs. Mercier, Campbell, Smith, Shepard and Valier also hit safely.
"I'm so proud of these kids," said Craft.
"Especially the eighth graders. We had to replace eight starters from last year so most of these kids were on the field today for the first time ever under regional tournament pressure. We achieved two more of our pre-season goals today by winning the regional and getting to 20 wins."
Johnston City used five pitchers in the game less than 24 hours after using four others in a win over Herrin.
"I didn't manage the first part of the game very well, and we ran out of pitching," JCMS head coach Trevor Clark said. "Give Du Quoin a lot of credit because they hit some rockets against us. That's a good team they have."
Joining Du Quoin and Murphysboro in the Class L Elite Eight are defending state runner-up Harrisburg, Carmi, Waterloo, Belleville Wolf Branch, Salem and Edwardsville's Carriel Middle School.