For many consecutive summers, the Vienna Post 180 American Legion baseball team enjoyed another successful post-season.
The playoffs were capped by a third-straight District 17 tournament championship, then a third-place finish in the state competition.
The state-tournament berth was the team’s third in a row and 10th in the last 12 times the event has been played. It was not held in 2020 because of the pandemic, and Vienna lost in a state-tourney play-in game in 2021.
Vienna won the state in 2018 and 2019.
“We mix it up every year and see what happens. We have been pretty good getting to the state,” Vienna manager Nick Good said.
Good singled out many players who enjoyed strong seasons, including Jackson Bourdeau, Chris Downs, Drew Hall, Henry Novario, Will Thompson and Jack Jenkins, who each have committed to play in college next year. Another might be Carter Tuft. He led Post 180 with two homers and hits with 35.
Novario had 24 hits and 15 stolen bases. He will play at McDaniel College. His older brother, Eli Novario, played for Vienna after his freshman season on the Christopher Newport University team.
Hall had 22 hits this summer. He will play at Elizabethtown College.
Downs will play at Maryland Eastern Shore, Thompson at Baker College and Jenkins at Mary Baldwin University.
Jenkins had a 1.80 earned run average this season. The right-hander performed his best late in the season, not allowing an earned run in his final 14 1/3 innings pitched with 19 strikeouts, just two walks, a hit batter and yielding just four hits.
Jenkins worked two perfect innings of relief in the district championship game, striking out five of the six batters he faced. He then retired 10 of the 11 hitters in his one state-tourney appearance, with five Ks. The only batter to reach base did so on an error.
In the state tournament, Vienna finished 2-2, losing to West End Post 125 by a 6-1 score in its first game; blanking Kingstowne, 10-0, in its second; topping Winchester 21, 6-3, in its third; before being eliminated by West End, 2-1, in the losers’-bracket final.
“We didn’t get enough hits in those two losses,” Good said.
Billy Dingell had Vienna’s one hit in its 6-1 loss and Bourdeau threw a complete game.
Eli Novario had two hits and an RBI in the 10-0 win; Dingell had two sacrifice flies; Tuft, Hall and Ben Grimsley had RBI singles; and Jacob Bradshaw singled.
Jenkins was the starting and winning pitcher and Beau Souders pitched in relief.
In the victory over Winchester, Jacob Ramsey threw a complete game for the win. Eli Novario, Grimsley, Tuft, Hall and James Robinson had big hits.
In the extra-inning elimination loss, West End’s winning run scored on a balk in the top of the eighth inning. Vienna tied the score at 1 in the sixth on an error.
