The best baseball season in Boerne Champion history came to an end last Thursday at the 5A state tournament in Round Rock at Dell Diamond.
Champion’s first appearance at the state baseball tourney was amazing on several different levels.
First, Champion was only the third-place team from its district (behind Smithson Valley and New Braunfels Canyon) and had to beat Kerrville Tivy in a third-place tiebreaker game just to take that spot.
Second, it was only Charger head coach Ben Woodchick’s second season leading the program.
Lastly, the seniors on the team had never even been to the playoffs before this year and in their first postseason appearance, they helped lead the Chargers to the state tourney.
Despite all that, Woodchick said he and the team believed it was possible to make it to state.
“There was no doubt, no doubt and the kids believed too. The goals have been the same, that’s getting to Round Rock and they believed it,” he said. “They believed the whole time; I can guarantee you that. Not playing a playoff game your whole school career and then believing you can make it to the state tournament, that takes a lot of courage and our kids didn’t back down and continued to push and knew it could happen.”
It helped that Champion was playing its best baseball of the season once the playoffs started and swept its opponents through the first three rounds. They were 10-2 through the first five rounds and went 4-0 in elimination games before making it to state.
The seniors had their first chance at the playoffs canceled their freshman year in 2020 because of COVID. In 2021 (Chuck Foster’s last year) and in 2022 (Woodchick’s first season), the Chargers finished fifth in district play both seasons and missed out on a playoff berth.
And in 2023, despite no playoff experience, they went six rounds deep and ended up in the state tournament.
“Our seniors hadn’t seen a playoff game and when we won that first series against Liberty Hill, that was big for us and our seniors were proud of that moment,” Woodchick said. “They did everything they could to get here.”
Champion used 14 players in last Thursday’s state semifinals game against Argyle and of the 14 that saw action, only 4 were seniors (Ethan Harrison, Nic Cortez, Rowdy Miller and Andrew Frei), the rest were juniors and sophomores.
Six were juniors (Jordan Ballin, Evan Kuhl, Cameron Logan, Quinn Grable, Gage Goldberg and Brock Browning) and the other four were sophomores (Sam Miller, Grant Kinzel, Aidan Smith and Jackson Melanson), including two of the three pitchers used in the game.
Even though only four seniors saw the field in the state game, Woodchick said they and the other seniors helped lead the team all year.
“We’re obviously pretty young but we had seniors that were in big spots. Every single senior had their role and every single player was a part of it,” he said. “We used so many different players in different situations and different times but they were all in it for each other.”
Woodchick did single out one of the seniors for his efforts this season.
“We don’t do what we do without Rowdy Miller and for him to come in, it sums up the whole season. He’s been giving his all, all year and it’s unbelievable,” the coach said. “They had belief and I think Rowdy Miller did a lot of that for us. He was coming into the season hardly throwing and a lot of what we were going to do relied on what he was going to do and he knew that. So, for him to have this kind of season was awesome. I think we really rallied around him.”
As a pitcher, Miller went undefeated through the regular season and was 12-0 at one point before finishing the year at 12-1. Miller was battling a sore shoulder but still pitched most of the season. He was scheduled to miss the last two rounds of the playoffs, but ended up throwing in both the regional finals and in the state game.
“I just knew I had to go out there and give our team a chance to win,” he said.
After the state game, Woodchick said he was excited for the future as 10 of the 14 players used in the game will be back next season.
“What’s cool is not just the players, but how many games we just played, we played almost a college season (46 games with a 33-12-1 record) and how they learned to win. That’s probably the most valuable thing that’s happened with the younger kids throughout this year, not just winning but winning against probably four or five of the top 10 teams in the state, that’s probably more valuable than the physical stuff,” he said. “I’m proud of them and proud of everything they’ve done this season, it’s been an historic season.”
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