Oran baseball team crashes out of Class 1 playoffs with 9-0 loss to Cooter

ORAN, Mo. -- Seth Ressel's final walk off the mound at the Oran baseball field was toward the shortstop position.

On a day when he and his teammates weren't anywhere near their best, the Cooter Wildcats were.

The result was a 9-0 loss that included Ressel leaving the mound before the end of a playoff game for the first time since his sophomore season and a season that ended before the final four for the first time in four years for the Eagles, the defending Class 1 state champions.

"Obviously it's not how you want to finish the season," Oran coach Kody Campbell said. "It's a tough way to go out. They were just better than us today in all aspects of the game, and sometimes you've got to tip your hat to the other team."

The Wildcats had been ousted by Oran in the sectional round each of the last three seasons, and were 0-6 all time in sectional games against the Eagles, according to first-year Cooter coach Bobby McCulloch.

Oran players leave the field after their 9-0 loss to Cooter in the Class 1 sectional Monday in Oran, Missouri. (Fred Lynch)

"It feels amazing because they put us out every year, and it's history for our school to beat theirs in the sectional game," Cooter junior Riley Hickerson said. "So it just feels really good."

Hickerson's two-out, two-run double in the top of the third inning gave the Wildcats a 2-0 lead that, coupled with a one-run loss to the Eagles earlier in the season, boosted his team's confidence.

"I knew if we scored first that it would give our team more hope to win, and just whoever scores first I feel like always wins in these kind of games," Hickerson said.

Oran, which lost a baserunner in each of the first two innings, had a chance to reply in the bottom of the inning. Ressel reached on the Wildcats' lone error with two outs, and Ben Heuring followed with a double before Jacob Priggel was walked to load the bases.

That brought up clean-up hitter Hunter Schlosser, who was struck out on the seventh pitch of his at-bat by Cooter starter Austin Phelps.

"That's a tough spot to be in," Campbell said about Schlosser's at-bat. "It's a tough spot to ask a kid to step into and kind of slow everything down and put together a competitive at-bat, but he battled and put together a good at-bat. He just swung at a pitch that was probably out of the strike zone, but we said before that they were calling the pitch up, so I'd rather see him strike out swinging than go down looking.

"You can second-guess a thousand different things, but bottom line is we just didn't play very good today, and that's what is the hardest pill to swallow about it."

Cooter put the game out of reach in the top of the fifth with plenty of help from the Eagles.

No. 9 batter Melvin Cummings collected the second of his three hits on the day to start the inning and Ressel walked a batter before throwing him out at second on a sacrifice bunt that put runners on first and third with one out.

Hickerson then dribbled a ball toward Heuring at second base that could have resulted in Oran's second double play of the day and ended the inning. Instead it squibbed through his legs and allowed a run to score to make it 3-0.

After another single and an error by Ressel on a grounder back to him, Ressel walked in a run and gave up a single to Tyler McLevain that was misplayed by the outfielder, allowing two more runs to score before he was thrown out trying to advance to third to end the inning just before another runner crossed the plate.

Cooter added a run in the sixth, and Ressel was replaced by Chance Tenkhoff after allowing a single and a homer -- just the second he gave up in his high school career -- to Cole Crowder in the top of the seventh. Ressel, who allowed nine hits in a 4-3 win over Cooter earlier in the year, allowed 11 hits Monday.

"I thought the strike zone was a little different than what we've been used to," Campbell said. "He was calling the pitch up for strikes and he seemed like he wasn't getting that call down at the knees, and so he was having to elevate some pitches and I think that got him into trouble. And we kicked it around and made mistakes. We're out of that one inning with the double play, we made the error on the little dribbler there with two outs, and then we let a ball get past us in the outfield, so you hate to go out like that not playing your best, but sometimes, like I said before, this is a crazy game and sometimes stuff like that happens."

Oran (16-11) drew eight walks and had one batter hit by a pitch in the contest but mustered just three hits against a combination of Phelps and McLevain.

"The first pitch he threw me was a curveball, which I should have seen it coming, and I should've hit it hard, but I didn't," said Ressel, describing facing Phelps. "I think he threw me one more fastball, and I think the rest were curveballs, so he was really relying on his offspeed. Then he had trouble placing his offspeed, so then he had trouble throwing his fastball, so he started walking guys, getting deeper in counts, and that's when they brought him out."

Ressel, the reigning Southeast Missourian player of the year who closed out all four of Oran's playoff victories a year ago, stayed as stoic after the career-ending loss as he was after many of the Eagles' biggest wins over the past four years. He was a member of three final four teams and one state championship in baseball and a final four basketball team at Oran.

"Just really don't regret playing," he said when asked what he'd like to pass on to the Eagles' underclassmen. "Play like it's your last because some day it's going to be, and it's going to hit you hard."

He said Monday's loss was hitting him hard but that he could walk away without the regret he cautioned against.

"Yeah, I feel like I can say that because of, I guess, my career and the teams we've had, our success," he said. "These past couple years we've really played hard, and this year we played hard, too, so you can't really say much."

Cooter 002 041 2 -- 9 12 1

Oran 000 000 0 -- 0 3 3

WP -- Austin Phelps. LP -- Seth Ressel. HR -- Cole Crowder. 2B -- Riley Hickerson (C) 2, Melvin Cummings (C), Tyler McLevain (C), Ben Heuring (O). Multiple hits -- Cooter: Hickerson 2-4, Chase Evans 2-4, Crowder 2-4, McLevain 2-4, Cummings 3-3.