Blair Oaks Baseball soars to a Class 3 championship

OZARK, Mo. (KMIZ)

Blair Oaks is bringing a gold trophy home to Wardsville after defeating Duchesne 11-1 in the MSHSAA baseball championship.

In just his first season with the Falcons, head coach Chris Ebright lead his team back to the mountaintop, for their second state title in the past three years.

The Pioneers were the first team to get across home, getting around on a past ball to take a 1-0 lead in the opening frame. However, that was the last time Blair Oaks trailed. Carson Verslues launched a double to left field that brought in a pair for the green and white.

Mitchell Rogers kept the scoring streak going in the second, bringing another run home on an infield bunt, and Wyatt Libbert would add an insurance run in the third to go up by three.

But the fourth inning is where the bats really started to heat up. Carson Verslues added a third RBI to his nightly total with another deep double. Not long after, Hayden Lackman blasted a triple that put Blair Oaks up 6-1, and Kaden Schulte would add a third score of the inning to go up by six.

While the offense kept piling on the runs, Vander Halford was lighting up the Duschene batters. Despite giving up three hits and a run in the first, he locked things down the rest of the game, allowing just one more hit the rest of the way and no more scores.

In the fifth, the Falcons put the Pioneers to bed. Hayden Lackman hit his second triple of the night, this time clearing the bases to put his side up by nine, and placing the winning run 90 feet from home. A four-pitch walk and an intentional walk reloaded the bases with two outs for Blair Oaks. Facing a pull count, Wyatt Libbert was hit by a pitch to advance the winning run across home, with the game ending in a run-rule victory.

With the win, Blair Oaks earns its fifth title in school history, and its second in the past three seasons. Throughout the postseason, the Falcons outscored their opponents 63-2, with five of those six games ended via a run-rule stoppage.