Leonardtown baseball heading to 4A state finals

A pair of Southern Maryland Athletic Conference baseball teams were looking to punch their tickets to their respective state title games this weekend at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, but only one of them succeeded.

Leonardtown High School (14-8) rallied from an early 2-1 deficit to defeat Urbana of Frederick County 3-2 on Tuesday afternoon in a 4A state semifinal contest at Shirley Povich Field in Montgomery County.

Nolan Taitano scored on a double by Troy Smith in the seventh and relief pitcher Brayden Owen earned the win as the Raiders advanced to Friday’s 4A state championship game at 7:30 p.m. against Walt Whitman of Montgomery County at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf.

“We’ve come a long way since the last week of the regular season,” Leonardtown first-year coach Austin Guy said. “We headed into the playoffs with a little momentum and then we beat some good teams in our region. Today we fell behind early but the guys battled back. Troy came through with a clutch double and Brayden pitched very well for us today.”

Patuxent High School (20-3), however, fell to Middletown of Frederick County 2-1 in 13 innings on Tuesday evening in a 2A state semifinal contest at McCurdy Field in Frederick. Middletown and Patuxent were tied at 1-1 through the regulation seven innings, but the Knights finally pushed the winning run across in the 13th inning to end the Panthers’ 10-game win streak and bid for the 2A state title.

Coincidentally, Tuesday proved to be a dark day for the respective SMAC champions on the diamond. Patuxent, which forged a 2-1 victory over La Plata to capture the SMAC baseball title game at Chancellor’s Run Regional Park, and Chopticon softball, which downed Northern 7-5 in the SMAC softball title game that same evening, also fell on Tuesday in the state semifinals.