A Division I state baseball championship was not in the cards for the third-seeded Brattleboro Colonels.
It wasn't even close. In fact, it was downright ugly.
The top-seeded Champlain Valley Redhawks won their second straight championship, defeating Brattleboro at Centennial Field on June 13, 13-0. The Redhawks won the state title in 2019, and the coronavirus outbreak wiped out the 2020 season. It was CVU's fifth baseball title overall.
According to the Vermont Principals' Association, it was the biggest D-I championship rout since 1956, when Brattleboro steamrollered Hartford, 18-1. It was also the third-largest margin of victory since the state high school baseball tournament was first held in 1938.
The Colonels were shorthanded before the first pitch. Henry Thurber, who scored the winning run in the quarterfinal game against Colchester on June 4, had an emergency appendectomy the day before the semifinal game against Essex on June 9 and had not recovered in time for the championship.
Brattleboro could not get the offense going in the top of the first … then came the massacre.
With one out in the bottom of the first, Colonels' pitcher Zinabu McNeice gave up the first hit to CVU's Kyle Tivnan. Ryan Canty followed with a double, scoring Tivnan and Ryan Eaton to make it 2-0, Redhawks.
Braedon Jones made it to first on a Colonels' throwing error. Asa Roberts hit a single off McNeice and Canty and Jones crossed the plate to make it 4-0, CVU.
The Redhawks hit parade didn't relent. Sam Morse hit a single, knocking in Roberts for the Redhawks fifth run of the game. Morse scored on a single by Tyler Wuthrich and the final blow came when Angelos Carroll hit a triple off McNeice, scoring Wuthrich to make it 7-0, CVU.
With one out on the scoreboard and still in the bottom of the first, Colonels coach Chris Groeger replaced McNeice with freshman pitcher Brandon Weeks.
CVU starting pitcher Oliver Pudvar toyed with the Colonels' line-up to get the win. The southpaw struck out 18 batters, walked just one batter and gave up three hits: one to Turner Clews, and two to Alex Kurucz.
He got more than enough run support as the Redhawks put up another six runs before the game was over. Canty scored in the bottom of the third, Carroll in the fourth, and Pudvar, Tivnan, Eaton, and Jones in the sixth.
Weeks finished out the game for the Colonels, striking out five.
Brattleboro senior Gregory Fitzgerald went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts in his final game. He said there just was no way they could get around CVU's hitting or pitching on this given day.
“(CVU) hit the ball a lot more than we expected them to,” Fitzgerald said. “We really haven't faced competition that hard and we haven't faced a left-handed pitcher like Pudvar who kept us guessing with his off speed pitches.”
The other highlight of the game was the Colonels' fielding. Kurucz caught two high pop-ups at first that required re-positioning and laser-guided focus.
The CVU Redhawks finish the season with a record of 16-3. The Colonels finished their season with a record of 13-2.
Kurucz, Fitzgerald, Thurber, and Caden Wood are the team's graduating seniors. Brattleboro will also lose slugger Jack Pattison who is transferring to Vermont Academy for his senior year.
Groeger wishes they all could have ended their careers with a Division I state title, which would have been Brattleboro's first since 2004.
“We got off to a horrible start, it was a nightmare,” Groeger said after the gamed. “It's really hard to recover from being down seven runs that quick. We had all kinds of problems with (Pudvar). It was too much of a deficit too early.”
The Colonels defeated Essex, 5-4, in a June 9 semifinal to reach the title game. Alex Bingham was the winning pitcher, giving up all four runs on seven hits. Weeks threw two innings of scoreless relief to get the save.
Brattleboro rallied for five runs in the third inning against Essex. Wood had a two-run single in that inning. Pattison had two hits and drove in a run, and Bingham and Weeks also hit safely.