Sartans win road thriller, clinch district title

GRANTS — A gritty freshman, and a ball launched into the jet stream.

That was what separated visiting St. Pius from Grants and clinched a District 5-4A championship for the Sartans.

Jacob Madrid hit a towering — and wind-aided — two-run home run two batters into the game, and ninth grader Hunter Jiron escaped repeated threats on the mound from the Pirates as Class 4A’s fifth-ranked St. Pius beat the second-ranked defending state champions 2-1 in a tense showdown on Tuesday night.

All the runs were scored in the first inning.

The Sartans (13-11, 6-0) own a two-game lead over Grants (13-5, 4-2) in league play, and have swept the Pirates. Each only has two district games remaining.

“We talk about climbing the hill all the time, until we get to mid-May,” St. Pius coach Jim Stebbins said. “And our guys have that mentality right now, and they’re grinding their butts off and we are able to grind out games like this on the road.”

Zain Unis led off the game with a single for St. Pius. Madrid, a senior third baseman, followed, and turned around a high fastball from Grants starter Steve Barela to straightaway center. It carried and carried and finally cleared the batting eye, barely, for a 2-0 lead about a minute into the game.

“I just stayed on it and got enough to poke it out,” Madrid said.

Madrid, Stebbins noted, has been swinging a hot bat.

“Jacob, the last six, seven, eight games, he’s been our best hitter,” he said. “He’s been squaring up a lot of balls.”

The rest of the way, the burden fell largely to Jiron, who most certainly did not perform like a freshman on the road in a tough environment with Grants threatening in no fewer than four of the six innings he pitched.

“I love pitching against the best teams,” he said. “Because it makes me better and I always have a lot of confidence against them.”

Grants was left to bemoan multiple failed opportunities. Seven of the 12 runners the Pirates left on base were in scoring position, and many with less than two out.

“It’s been our MO this year,” Grants coach Mike Furbee said. “We struggle with runners left on base.”

The Pirates did answer Madrid’s home run in the bottom of the first, with Noah Lundstrom’s single to deep short scoring a runner from third. Grants left another runner at third. It had yet another runner at third with one out in the second, but couldn’t score him with two fly balls.

Grants loaded the bases with two outs in the fourth, but Jiron induced a fly ball to right to end that threat.

Jiron seemed finally on the verge of giving up the lead in the sixth. Grants had runners at second and third with nobody out. St. Pius brought the infield in. A ground ball to short couldn’t score a run for the Pirates. Then Jiron recorded a strikeout.

“I feel like at the end there I had to really trust my defense and throw strikes, and get outs,” Jiron said.

Stebbins made a visit to the mound during that sixth.

“We contemplated taking him out,” he said. “But we trusted our guy.”

Jiron got Grants to fly out to right to escape almost certain damage in that dramatic sixth.

“We just couldn’t get that hit when we needed,” Furbee said.

Said Madrid of Jiron: “Any situation. Stone cold.”

This was nothing particularly new to Stebbins, what he watched from Jiron.

“It’s a testament to the work he’s put in. He’s worked really hard this offseason to prove to us that he could be one of our guys,” Stebbins said. “And he’s gone out time and again and kind of did that for us. We kind of expect it now.”

Ashton Warren allowed two Grants baserunners in the bottom of the seventh, but yet another fly ball, to shallow right, when two St. Pius defenders banged into one another, was the game clincher and he earned the save.