A year after throwing a no-hitter in a district championship victory, Glendale senior pitcher Drew Wedgeworth was hit hard in the first inning and found himself in an early two-run deficit but he didn't panic.
This year's Falcons have a deep enough lineup to where everyone in the dugout knew it would answer back. After scoring four unanswered to finish the game, it was Wedgeworth, once again, at the bottom of a dogpile before running over to the Glendale faithful screaming at it to get on its feet.
Glendale is back-to-back district champions after a 4-2 win over Nixa on Saturday evening in the Class 6, District 6 title game at Kickapoo High School. A winner of a Class 5 district a year ago, the bump up to Class 6 didn't matter with the Falcons adding their fourth district championship to their trophy case in the last five seasons.
The Falcons will host Blue Springs on Saturday in the Class 6 state quarterfinals for their first trip to the semifinals since Don Pronance led the program to a state championship in 1978.
"I think we just want it more this year," shortstop Mark Ross II, a Central Arkansas signee, said. "We've just come up short all the other years and we know how it feels to lose. We don't want to let up this year."
Glendale overcame Nixa star junior Wyatt Vincent's two-run homer in the first inning. The Falcons tied it in the bottom of the third with Alex Rankin's RBI single. They took the lead on a Ross RBI single to center before Wedgeworth followed with a sac fly to take the 4-2 lead in the bottom of the fourth.
Wedgeworth settled in and hit his spots for the final six innings. He finished by throwing a complete game with three strikeouts, eight hits and two runs allowed, both coming off Vincent's one swing in the opening frame.
"We knew Nixa has had trouble closing out games all year," Wedgeworth said. "If we were able to get past that, we knew we'd be fine. Once we got to that third inning, the momentum changed, we put up some runs and we were good to go from there."
Glendale advanced to 26-5 this season and it will be more than a month since its last loss when it takes the field for its state quarterfinal. Its 10-game winning streak has seen the bats from up and down the lineup come alive with Ross leading the way and the big bat of Sebastian Norman starting to strike fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers.
The Falcons are flying high right now. They're playing their best ball of the year and will have a chance at making history come quarterfinal time.
"It's a mature group and a group that understands that it's a seven-inning game and if you go 2-0 in the first, we have a lot of time left," Glendale head coach Jim Julian said. "With our offense, we're capable of chipping away. One-through-nine is very capable."
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