Lake junior pitcher Drew Tajblik, a University of Toledo commit. (Nicholas Huenefeld | Sentinel-Tribune file)
By Bruce Hefflinger
Prep Baseball Report
AKRON — This weekend the Lake baseball team will play in the Division III state tournament at Canal Park, the home park of the Double A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians.
Lake takes on Minford at 1 p.m. Saturday, following the Heath-Apple Creek Waynedale game, which began at 10 a.m. The winners meet for a state championship at 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Courtesy the Ohio High School Athletic Association, Prep Baseball Report previews the four teams in Lake’s division.
LAKE: Lake will be going to the state tournament for the first time since 2001 after getting past perennial state power Coldwater 6-2 in the regional finals.
Ryan Wagner gave up five hits and fanned five in 6.2 innings with Jay Blazevich coming in to record the final out.
Blazevich had three hits for the Flyers, which reached the regional finals courtesy of a 6-1 win over Bucyrus Wynford in the regional semis behind the pitching of junior Drew Tajblik, a Toledo commit who scattered six hits while recording six strikeouts in his school-record 11th win of the season.
Jack Sobzack had a pair of hits for Lake, which has not won a state game in three previous appearances, 1935, 1956 and 2001. Tajblik leads the Flyers in hitting with a .375 average while stealing a school record 34 bases this season.
Sophomore catcher Gavin Kohlhoffer is batting .350 with 25 stolen bases while Blazevich carries a .340 average with 26 steals for the 11th-rated team in Ohio by Prep Baseball and fourth by the OHSBCA.
MINFORD: A three-run sixth inning put Minford on top and the Falcons went on to edge Portsmouth, 6-5, for their second regional championship in school history.
Mason Book and Grant Wheeler hit back-to-back RBI triples to give Minford the lead, after once trailing 5-1. Carson Cronin finished with three hits, two RBIs and two runs for the 24th-rated team in Ohio by Prep Baseball and 27th by the OHSBCA.
Max Lauder was the winning pitcher with Wheeler earning the save. The sixth inning was also big in the district semifinals, with Minford putting six on the board during an 11-4 win over Barnesville. Rhyan Queen went 4-4 with five RBIs to lead a 12-hit attack for Minford, which was behind 4-0 in the fifth.
Cam Thacker went the distance in the district finals against Wheelersburg, allowing six hits and fanning seven helping the Falcons avenge two regular-season losses. Thacker, who threw the second perfect game in school history earlier in the year, is 10-2 on the season while Lauder is 7-2.
Cronin tops the squad in batting with a .441 average while Queen is hitting .382 and Wheeler, a Mt. Vernon Nazarene commit, .376 for second-year head coach Eli Daniels. Minford’s only previous state appearance came in 2018.
HEATH: Heath, the top-rated team in Ohio by Prep Baseball, is headed to state for the second year in a row after beating Cincinnati Christian, 4-0.
Riley Baum was the winning pitcher in the regional finals for the second year in a row, throwing a two-hit shutout for the Bulldogs, ranked second in the state by the OHSBCA.
Leadoff hitter Connor Corbett had three hits and Wyatt Binckley pitched six innings and had two RBIs in a 7-4 semifinal win over Cincinnati Country Day. Conner Toomey scored twice for Heath, which finished just 6-20 three years ago and 10-13 in 2022.
Binckley threw a one-hitter in a 9-0 win over West Jefferson in the district finals after Jaiden Dansby came through with a walkoff double to score Baum in a 2-1 victory over Marion Pleasant in the district semis.
Findlay commit Hayden Woodward, a 1B/P, is among the senior starters for a team with just two juniors in the lineup. The Licking County League champions, which lost to Harrison Central 2-1 in the state semifinals a year ago, has won state twice, in 2002 and 2007.
APPLE CREEK WAYNEDALE: The D-III state champions the past two years will be gunning for number three after defeating Perry 8-3 in the regional finals.
A seven-run seventh inning rallied Waynedale to the victory, with Cam Miller, Shane Coblentz and Brayden Steiner all recording RBI hits in the frame for the Bears, giving coach Lucas Daughery his 100th coaching win at the school.
Tate Venables was the winning pitcher, allowing four hits and no earned runs over six innings in relief of starter Otto Solorzano, the winning pitcher in the past two state championship games, a 2-1 win over Milan Edison in 2022 and a 10-1 victory over Harrison Central a year ago.
Coblentz, who struck out a dozen in a 2-0 district semifinal win over Tri-Valley, fanned 10 in a 4-1 victory over South Range in the regional semis.
This is the fourth state appearance in school history for Waynedale, the 16th-rated team in the state by Prep Baseball and 20th by the OHSBCA.
