Cornwall River Rats edge Orleans for Ontario 14U baseball crown

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They’re Ontario champions.

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The Cornwall 14U Junior River Rats survived an Orleans late-inning rally and beat the Red Sox 8-7 in the final game Friday night at the week-long Little League Ontario 2024 Junior Provincials at Legion Park, earning a trip to the nationals in Lethbridge, Alta., that begins early in the new week.

“We were (competing) as hosts, and now we’ve defended the title (that the Cornwall 14U team won last summer), and now we have a banner,” River Rats head coach Pat Collins told his troops when they gathered in the infield just after the trophy presentation.

Collins has coached the group for years and the team has won numerous district titles. Ironically this summer, the pre-determined provincial event hosts did not win the district final, but instead used the sometimes mildly disrespected ‘host’ label as a rallying cry, and made it into the Ontario championship game for the first time under Collins’ guidance .

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The trophy presentation was poignant. Called on to hand it to Collins was his good friend Travis Cox – head coach of the Cornwall 14U squad that won the Ontario crown a year ago in Oakville and finished fourth in Lethbridge.

“This is a big moment for us,” Cox said after the presentation. “We’ve coached together for years, our kids have played together a long time.”

The celebration later moved to deep left-center field, families joining the team and basking in a gorgeous night’s warm, early twilight – and in the excitement of the moment. Players talked about being on a jet plane soon – some for the first time in their lives.

And, logistical reality had to be addressed too. Travel plans were discussed, and adults who’ll be heading west had to scramble to deal with work arrangements and adjustments.

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“The plans are to leave Monday,” Collins said of the itinerary for a competition that starts Tuesday and concludes eight days later on July 31.

Cornwall’s momentum as the week went on translated to more support in the stands, lawns and knolls surrounding the picturesque Lutt Bergeron Memorial Field; a smaller gathering for Friday’s 5 pm first pitch grew to hundreds of spectators by early evening, and it included several now 30-something members of the 2009 Cornwall Black Sox national championship team who ultimately competed at the 2009 Senior Little League World Series in Bangor, Tomorrow.

They saw Cornwall in the middle innings – while starting pitcher Max Houde assumed full control of the contest – break open a 3-3 tie and take an 8-3 lead, but cough up most of the advantage before getting a strikeout from Evan Rutley to end the showdown when Orleans had the tying and go-ahead runners in scoring position.

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Rutley, the team’s leadoff hitter and third baseman, is the lone player on the club who went west with last year’s 14U squad, and that experience in a high-pressure situation may have been invaluable when Collins called upon him to pitch in relief of Houde , who threw 97 pitches in six innings of work.

The River Rats have an impressive array of hurlers who Collins can hand the ball to. When the coach was asked why this team, this year, is the one that finally breaks through to a provincial crown, his answer was the pitching depth.

“We have a lot more pitchers than in previous years,” Collins said, noting that of the squad’s 12 players, eight of them have taken the mound in games this season.

It was Houde who got the assignment for Friday’s final, the 14-year-old who’ll be heading into Grade 9 at La Citadelle acknowledging after the game that he had a lot of nervous energy swirling in the hours before the match.

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But once Houde got out on the field, and especially in the middle innings, he was dominant. Houde at one point and going back to the third inning retired nine straight Orleans batters, getting two outs in the top of the sixth. Houde induced an infield popup that would have ended the frame, but an error extended it, and the Red Sox cashed in three runs against a rattled River Rats squad to suddenly make it 8-6.

A couple of miscues in the seventh led to another Orleans run, before Rutley nailed down the win with that strikeout.

Collins, who’s coached Rutley since the player was age eight, several times from the dugout reminded his pitcher to take a deep breath before tossing, and harness the energy of the situation.

“It was a big moment for these kids,” Collins said. “We didn’t make it easy on ourselves, but they (regained composure) and they pulled through.”

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Offensive heroes for Cornwall included Josh Bourgon and Brady Beck with back-to-back RBI hits in the bottom of the second inning that tied the game 2-2.

Down 3-2 in the third, Jacob Secord led off and tapped a slow roller toward third base, barely getting out a hit with a head-first slide. It was a key effort – two outs later Secord tied the game 3-3 on Evan Maxwell’s solid two-strike single to right-centerfield.

The River Rats took their first lead an inning later, Max Garrow scoring on a two-out Orleans throwing error, and Bourgon delivering a long single to score Seb Sauve to make it 5-3.

Cornwall’s two-out offensive magic continued in the bottom of the fifth, Beck scoring on an error, and Rutley crossing home on Houde’s double just inside the right-field line. Houde then scored when he charged for the plate on an Orleans wild pitch.

In the semifinal play on Thursday, the River Rats held off the Upper Ottawa Valley River Cats 5-4 to advance to the championship game. In the second semifinal, Orleans upset the powerhouse East Nepean Eagles 2-0.

East Nepean finished in first place during the round-robin portion of the tournament, going 5-0. Second-place Cornwall was 3-2, and Orleans was fourth with a round-robin record of 2-3.

If the River Rats win the nationals, their great summer of 2024 adventure will continue much closer to home, 30 minutes southwest of Windsor at the Junior League World Series, Aug. 4-11 in Taylor, Mich.

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