RIDGEFIELD — As the Warriors walked off the field, it was difficult to find a dry eye.
The Warriors went blow-for-blow early against R.A. Long on Wednesday, but they couldn’t keep up as the game went along, and they left Ridgefield with a season-ending 11-3 defeat.
“To send them off that way is extremely difficult,” Rochester coach Brad Quarnstrom said. “You can’t fault their effort. They competed, and they fought.”
R.A. Long seemed to take control of the game immediately, as the Lumberjacks plated three runs in the first to take a 3-0 lead.
Rochester immediately responded in the second though, as Colton Weiss hit a two-out, two-run double and Ethan Rodriguez followed with an RBI double of his own to tie the game at three.
“They’ve always been a never say die type of group,” Quarnstrom said. “You gotta fight and scratch and claw to get your way back into it, and that’s what this group did.”
When the Lumberjacks retook the lead with a pair in the bottom of the second, the game seemed to be turning into a shootout.
Instead, the Warriors didn’t make a dent in the deficit in their next two at-bats, and R.A. Long blew the game open with five in the bottom of the fourth.
From the third inning on, only two Warriors reached base safely.
The Warriors finish their season with a 12-10 record and are set to graduate six seniors — Tate Quarnstrom, Hayden Pietras, Mason Armstrong, Ben Johnson, and Henry Gramelspacher.
Coach Quarnstrom began to choke up when talking about this senior class, saying that he watched the “Rochester boys” grow up playing with and against each other, even before they made it to the high school.
“There’s a ton of memoires,” Quarnstrom said. “The last four years have been special … I can’t ask for much more. I’m extremely proud of them.”
