Finally satisfied: Ressel earns his championship with the Oran baseball team

Enough time had passed between the time he threw the final strike in Oran's first state championship win that Seth Ressel had been hugged, patted on the back and photographed dozens of times before he was asked if wearing the gold medal around his neck was everything he thought it would be.

"Yeah," Ressel said. "And more."

The junior then looked down at the medal and smiled.

"This is a relief," he said. "I'm satisfied now."

To understand this reaction you have to understand all that happened before that moment. Ressel, the Southeast Missourian baseball player of the year, said he experienced all the overwhelmingly positive emotions you expect, but relief and satisfaction are the feelings that come first when he thinks about being a state champion.

"It's off my shoulders," Ressel said. "Freshman year we came so close, and we couldn't pull through. Last year I feel like a big part of that was on my error that we lost, and so I knew this year I had to make up for it -- and I had the team that could do it. I knew we could do it. I had faith.

"It was just pressure. It was pretty much pressure on all of us because it was coach [Mitch] Wood's last year, we were losing Kody [Moore] and [Alex Heuring] -- a big part of our lineup -- we went to state in basketball and came so close and missed it, so you know you're that close, you have to win it this year. If you don't then you can't possibly see you doing it again."

Ressel has been a part of an unprecedented amount of athletic success at Oran, but before his team's breakthrough baseball championship that success had only come with unsatisfactory endings.

"I was happy," he said. "But it's just like, 'Finally.'"

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Ressel was used as a designated hitter when the Eagles' baseball team made the first of three consecutive trips to the final four and finished third during his freshman season.

He was playing shortstop in the state semifinal his sophomore season when his two-out error in the top of the eighth inning allowed the eventual winning run to score in a 3-2 loss.

Oran's Seth Ressel is the Southeast Missourian baseball player of the year. (Adam Vogler)

"I watched that on YouTube," Ressel said after bringing the error up without prompting. "The game's on YouTube, and I watched it and it just makes me sick."

Last week he said he still had the moment "burned in his brain" and he'd thought about it during a game just a day earlier, even though he's been told it's best to have amnesia and forget about on-field mistakes.

"I don't believe in that because if you made a bad play out in the field you come back and you use that as motivation to get a hit, or if you struck out then you go back out in the field and use it to make a great play," Ressel said. "That's what I do."

He said he counts the play, and any other mistakes he's made and near misses he's had, as lessons that have taught him how to handle situations properly.

Those lessons started before high school and away from the baseball field at the annual Notre Dame basketball tournament for eighth graders.

It's easy to minimize and even trivialize the importance of a junior high basketball tournament, but Ressel and his teammates and coach considered the tournament their state championship. It may be far from the most important tournament he's ever played, but there was no doubt it was the most important tournament he'd played up to that point.

"We were supposed to win it, but we lost in the semifinal round," Ressel said. "That really hurt us. After that, I pretty much knew that I wanted to win a championship -- me and Chance [Tenkhoff] both did because we were on the same team. We wanted to win a championship, so coming into my high school career that's what I wanted to do and that's what I had my mind set on, so when we finally did it I was satisfied."

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For pretty much every story that comes with a sad ending and a lesson for Ressel, there is one of success.

He hit the game-winning shot with 2.3 seconds left in Oran's state basketball quarterfinal victory last season, which sent the school to its first basketball final four since 1969.

The team's eventual fourth-place finish -- plus a lot of rain -- meant a late start on the field for the baseball team.

"I think that's why we got off to such a slow start," Ressel said. "We were inside a lot, we had a lot of younger guys who weren't used to being out in the field. So it was different, but it wasn't as much different for me as it was probably for the younger guys."

Ressel pitched well but took losses in two of his first three decisions on the mound, but he wasn't beaten again the rest of the season. He finished with a 10-2 record to go along with a 1.59 ERA in a team-leading 70 1/3 innings pitched. He struck out 69 batters while walking 13.

He batted .402 in the leadoff spot for the Eagles and had 12 RBIs while scoring 39 runs. He stole 18 bases and recorded six doubles, a triple and a home run. When he wasn't pitching, he played exceptional defense at shortstop, where he committed just three errors all season.

"He was more composed," said Heuring, Oran's senior catcher. "He was more aggressive. He was just overall a better player. In pressure situations he was clutch. He could spot a fastball when he was pitching, he stayed composed through it all, and he really helped us.

"He grew up, in a way. Sophomore year, he had a good year, but he came back junior year and he was more a leader. He wanted it -- you could tell -- more."

Ressel's ascent has been part of a steady progression rather than any radical changes or development.

"I believe I got bigger, probably a little faster, stronger," Ressel said. "I'm more mature. Pitch selection for me when I was batting -- I really narrowed it down. I swung at better pitches. I think I hit the ball harder this year than I did last year."

Ressel said he learned to pay more attention to umpires' strike zones, which in turn helped him select better pitches to hit.

His improvement on the mound was incremental as well.

"I hit my spots better," he said. "That's what I felt like I did a lot better this year was hitting spots -- inside definitely. That's what I had nervousness about was going inside on batters. I really did last year, but not so much this year because I controlled it a lot better."

Ressel gave up just two hits in a complete-game win over Cooter in the state sectional round and surrendered just five in the Eagles' 5-1 state semifinal win before relieving Moore to record only the final out of Oran's 8-4 come-from-behind win over Santa Fe in the state championship.

"It was amazing," Ressel said. "On the bus ride home it was crazy. We went berserk. We were blaring music, we did the 'Harlem Shake.' Then we got into town. We went through Chaffee and everybody was clapping. I was a little surprised. Then we got home -- there were just people lined up on the streets, cars everywhere. We had escorts from cops and fire trucks. We went all the way back through town. People were still going crazy. It was just awesome."

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To hear Ressel and his teammates tell it, their state championship was an underdog story no matter how many times they or other Oran players had been to previous final fours.

"Definitely the town of Oran didn't think we were going to do it at all," said Moore, a four-year starter for the Eagles. "Everybody around everywhere, that's all we heard all year was that we weren't bad, you know, but we didn't have a team like we did in the past, and they didn't win state championships, so this year we couldn't. Anybody that knows sports knows that's not true at all."

It was universally acknowledged that more talented Oran teams had been to the final four in the school's 11 previous trips, but Wood, the coach who led the school to 10 final fours before retiring after the season, said there were a couple things that set this team apart.

First, Wood relied more heavily on the top of his lineup than he ever recalled.

"I've never been in a position where I was, 'I'm not going to steal, I'm not going to do some things because I need to get the top of my order back up,' but I'm there," he said before the final four. "I'm always looking -- I'm looking at my lineup going, 'When is this kid coming up?'"

Moore, who followed Ressel in the lineup, batted .365 with a team-high 34 RBIs. No. 3 batter Heuring hit .443 with 28 RBIs. Although players batting lower in the lineup delivered important hits in the playoffs, the only other batter in the Eagles' lineup to finish the season with an average above .212 was sophomore center fielder Jacob Priggel, who batted .293.

The trio also served as the team's leadership, which they provided in a way that was all their own and unlike any in Wood's tenure.

"They really have got that right, goofy mixture of being able to do things," Wood said. "I don't know. It wears me out -- sleepless nights -- I'm here to tell you, more than usual, but they're just a little off-kilter. I'm not sure what it is. There's something there."

Moore rejected the notion that the team was merely "goofy."

"Oh my god," he said. "That's an understatement. We were mentally challenged. ... We are the biggest group of goobers I've ever seen, and I think that is part of the reason why we won because we were so laid back yet we were so serious."

It's not unusual for a group of high school baseball players to engage in ridiculous antics during the course of a season, but they never stopped for the Eagles.

"I've never seen, I've never been with, been around a team that just had that perfect mix of having fun but yet there to get the job done," Moore said. "I don't even know what to call that. I've never heard anybody talk about it just because there's not been a whole lot of teams that have been like that."

This is a hard concept for Ressel, Moore and Heuring -- all extremely competitive athletes who can and do turn anything from batting practice to sprints to work to hunting into competitions -- to explain.

For them, a lack of seriousness was never about a lack of desire. It was about having fun and was perhaps just the antidote the team needed to break a string of subpar state semifinal performances.

"I've done told everybody now that we went there I don't know how many times and didn't win, we're probably going to win nine in a row now," said Moore, who didn't back away from his prediction. "It's inevitable. We opened the gates. It's probably going to happen. I ain't kidding. In the next five years, we'll probably have three more."

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Ressel, who will return with all the members of Oran's starting lineup except Heuring and Moore, is not ready to think about next season or a repeat yet.

"I guess it's that way because we haven't started school yet," Ressel said. "It's not a new year. It's still the same year to me. I'm not a senior yet. I'm still a junior.

"I still can't believe I'm going to be a senior. It seems just like a month ago or last year I was a freshman."

Ressel, who has split time with the Lids Missouri Bulls and SEMO Strokers this summer, has spent just two weekends off the field since the final four ended while also playing plenty of basketball.

"What I really hope we can do is win districts again in basketball and then win districts again in baseball, because then I can say I won all four years in both sports," Ressel said of his senior year goals. "I feel like that would be really awesome to say."

He believes he and classmate Chance Tenkhoff would be the only Oran graduates to claim that achievement.

"That's my goal," he said. "Not personally but team-wise. Personally, I guess the same -- just get bigger, stronger, just develop like I did this year from last year."