Championship Central: Vaqueros claim JUCO title

“It's not easy,” Central Arizona coach Anthony Gilich said. “You know, you have teams gunning for you all year and you come through 10 elimination games, survived them all somehow and go through a who's who of junior college baseball. Just an unbelievable ride.”

Central Arizona College, the No. 6 seed in the Alpine Bank Junior College World Series, and No. 7 seed Cowley College (Kansas) saved their best games for last on Saturday night, with the camo-clad Vaqueros claiming a 4-2 victory for their second national championship in the past three tournaments.

They won it all in 2019, then lost last season to McLennan Community College (Texas) after the COVID-canceled 2020 tournament.

A year after being the losing pitcher in the national title game, Shane Spencer took the ball for the Vaqueros the night after throwing the final two innings Friday to get them back in the championship.

“He's he's our most resilient arm for sure,” Gilich said. “He can throw long toss every day, so pitch counts are kind of out on him. He just said he could pitch and he likes to throw and takes great, great care of his arm, so there really was no concern about bringing him back.

“Just an unbelievable, gutty performance. To start a game and win against San Jac, to get the save (Friday) night and to come out and get the win here, that's a heck of a tournament.”

That resilient arm gave the Vaqueros 6 1/3 innings of terrific stuff, utilizing an inside fastball that had the Tigers' hitters hitting ground balls instead of line drives as they had all week. He scattered nine hits, allowing two runs, one in each of the first two innings, then threw up zero after zero, striking out five, until turning the ball — reluctantly — over to Drew Sommers.

“I love to have the ball but this time I didn't fight Gilly; I trusted our bullpen,” Spencer said. “I knew we were gonna come out on top.

“I was a little bit sore (Saturday morning) but our trainer, he's very (good) on giving us treatment and getting us to come back. I was with him this morning and this afternoon and came back with obviously good stuff and just did what I usually do in normal games.”

A national championship game is anything but normal, and the Vaqueros' big lefty reliever allowed only one hit, a ninth-inning single by Bryce Madron, walked one and struck out five to lock down the title. Sommers bear-hugged his catcher, Trey Newman, who jumped into his arms when Janson Reeder grounded out to second.

"The thing about being calm is, well, I don't know how to explain it,” Sommers said of closing the game. “You just gotta relax your mind, you gotta be confident in yourself. You just gotta find a way."

Fittingly, Kiko Romero, who moved from right field to first base in the third inning — a position he played last season in the JUCO World Series — caught the ball for the final out, thrusting both arms into the air in triumph as the dogpile began.

"I'm never going to forget that,” Romero said. “I blacked out there for a sec but now I remember it, it's come back to me. I'm never forgetting it."

Amazingly, all six runs were scored in the first three innings in the first JUCO World Series championship game played between teams that lost their opening-round games. Central Arizona (60-13) is the seventh team to come all the way through the losers' bracket after a first-game loss and win the title in a game that took only 2 hours, 30 minutes.

“This is the first game all week where our rally cry hasn't been we're coning off a win, they're coming off a loss,” Gilich said. “That wasn't the case today. They're coming off four wins just like us. We knew their confidence was high and they were rolling a little bit, too. We knew they were riding a high and not coming off a low.”

Cowley (54-11) struck first, with Trey DeGarmo roping a double to left field and scoring on Conner Gore's two-out single to right.

The Tigers missed a huge opportunity to build on that lead in the first inning as Spencer was finding his rhythm. David Herring doubled to left, sending Gore to third, and Logan Vaughan walked to load the bases. Ty Hammack, though, grounded to short, forcing Vaughan at second.

“That was a huge one-spot. It could have easily been four and we could have chased a big number,” Gilich said. “To get just one right there was huge and that was the talk in our dugout, we just felt like we can survive ones and twos in an inning. We dodged a bullet there because they were hitting Shane a little bit and we got out of that jam.”

Cowley starter Grant Adler got himself in a jam in the first inning, loading the bases on three straight one-out singles, but appeared to get out of it when Dusty Garcia grounded to second for an inning-ending double play.

Instead, the ball scooted between the feet of second baseman Haden O'Toole, allowing two runs to score. Herring made the first of two outstanding diving catches at shortstop to end the inning, and Madron lined a two-out home run over the right field wall for a game-tying home run in the top of the second.

Central Arizona scored another unearned run in the bottom of the second. With two out and Newman on first after a base hit, Jaylin Rae lifted a fly ball to left-center. Both outfielders were calling for the ball and crossed paths, with the ball glancing off the glove of Madron, allowing Newman to score the go-ahead run.

Garcia hit a solo home run in the third, and from there, the scoreboard showed only one number: 0.

“We did it one time, why not a second time?” Garcia said of winning a tournament from the losers' bracket, as they did in the West District. “I think we won what, nine, 10 elimination games? There's no quit in us, everything we've been through, morning runs, workouts, there's no quit.”

Garcia was the unanimous pick as the all-tournament designated hitter, hitting .435 with 10 RBI, only one behind Romero, the tournament's MVP and outstanding hitter.

“Especially coming back from last year … we made it sting a little bit,” he said of the disappointment in 2021. “We came back and got the job done.”

Adler took the loss, but allowed only two earned runs, struck out seven and walked only one in 5 2/3 innings. Miguel Fulgencio struck out five of the six men he faced and Isaac Stevens got the final out of the eighth to give the Tigers, who specialized in comeback and walk-off victories in the playoffs, a chance to do it again.

Sommers, though, was just too tough, and Central Arizona was just too determined to win its 10th consecutive elimination game — also known as their second national championship in the past three JUCO World Series tournaments.

“This is a totally different feeling,” Spencer said. “We didn't get to feel it last year and came in second. We had some vengeance coming back. We did it this time, and it's such a great feeling.”