State champ Westminster coming to Cape to face Notre Dame baseball

Last year, the Notre Dame baseball team set out to see if they could compete with Westminster Christian Academy. They could.

Now the Bulldogs are ready to see if they can beat the three-time defending state champion Wildcats.

"We've been talking about it for three years now," Notre Dame coach Jeff Graviett said. "They seem to be the cream of the crop in Class 4, and we always want to see where our program compares to them."

The Bulldogs will host Westminster in a Class 4 quarterfinal at 5 p.m. today. The Wildcats ended Notre Dame's season in the quarterfinal round a year ago with a 7-5 win on their way to another state title. Notre Dame led 5-0 going the to the bottom of the fourth inning in that game, but the Wildcats rallied for five runs in the inning and two more in the fifth.

"You've got to find a way to hold them down is probably the biggest thing," Graviett said. "Last year I thought they were kind of down in the district championship game at their place and came back and won. We had them down in the quarterfinal game, and they came back and won, and they've done that twice already this year. So I told my guys [Wednesday] they'll come here expecting to win, and with teams like that you've just got to find a way to hold them down and keep them down. That's a tough task."

Five Westminster batters are hitting over .400 this season, led by Caleb Hicks with a .462 average and 37 RBIs.

"You've got to keep that top from beating you and control the bottom guys in the order," Graviett said. "The top guys are very solid, and they're going to produce some runs, and you've just got to kind of withstand it and hope you put some runs on the board yourself."

Notre Dame again scored first when the teams met earlier this season. The Bulldogs led 3-0 after a half-inning but lost 8-4. Graviett said seven of the eight hits Westminster had that day came from the top four batters in the lineup.

"That's what you want to make it [today]," Graviett said. "We feel like one of our strengths is our five through nine guys, and we hope that our guys will be better than theirs."

Graviett will start junior Graham Ruopp today after throwing Ross James against the Wildcats in this season's earlier meeting. He expects Westminster to start a new pitcher as well.

This time, the Wildcats will have to beat Notre Dame on its home field, and the Bulldogs are looking forward to the challenge.

"Two years ago when Kennett beat us in districts that was kind of our goal to get a chance to compete with [Westminster] and see how they were. Last year, that's what we used as motivation to get us to that point was we wanted to see if we could compete with them or if they were just so much better or so high and mighty. We got there and jumped out on them.

"We felt like we could be right there with them, and then we left there last year with that taste that we were just as good as they were and had a chance to win this whole thing this year. So getting a chance to compete with them this year was kind of the same story. We jumped out on them early and they had a little comeback and we just couldn't withstand it, so we know we're right there, but we know it's going to take our best game to do that."