The De Soto boys’ baseball team played their final games of their 2019 season on Tuesday, May 15, advancing past Spring Hill 6-0, but falling to Pittsburg 8-3 in the East Regional #3 championship at Jaycee Park in Pittsburg.

The Wildcats had already defeated Spring Hill twice this season by lopsided scores of 12-2 and 12-1, but head coach Joel Thaemert knew they still had a tall task ahead of them in claiming their third victory over the Broncos this season.

“We’re gonna throw the kitchen sink at Spring Hill. We didn’t see their best pitcher either time, and they’ve had some guys hurt [and] suspended. They’re gonna have everybody back so I expect it to be tough,” Thaemert said prior to the game.

The team had to play their Regional tournament games as a doubleheader with a two-hour break in between games, which put the players in a difficult spot mentally.

“It’s gonna be hard to go from focused to unfocused back to focused, but the advantage to the game times is we will have a small break in between as far as everyone can refuel and rehydrate during that time,” said senior pitcher Tyler Barkemeyer, who got the shutout against Spring Hill

According to Thaemert, “they’re basically done if they pitch in the first game,” so Barkemeyer was not available to pitch against Pittsburg.

That left a greater burden to the defense behind the pitcher for the second game, and as a result the Wildcats’ fielding faltered against the Dragons.

“As a team we just didn’t have our best game defensively [against Pittsburg],” sophomore pitcher Weston Madden said. “In the first game we had no errors and we played pretty clean all the way around, and I feel if we would’ve done that [against Pittsburg] we would’ve had a better chance to win.”

As their season comes to a close, Thaemert is hopeful for the future of the team since they will only lose three senior players from their varsity lineup.

“We’re a young bunch and we’ve got some good senior leadership … one game at a time and we’ll see what happens,” Thaemert added.