Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – When Steve Fish walked off the field after watching his team complete a WAMAC sweep of Solon last month he remembers thinking the Spartans would be a tough out in the postseason.

The long-time Marion coach was hoping his squad wouldn’t be the team faced with the task of knocking off the Spartans.

That is exactly what fifth-ranked Marion did on Wednesday and the Indians needed a few extra innings to do it.

Chase Zielke came up with the game-winning hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift Marion to a 4-3 win over Solon in the Class 3A Substate 4 title game at the Solon Nature and Recreation Area.

“When I saw the pairings, I knew it would be a tough one,” Fish said. “I knew coming in today we were going to have to get a great effort and we did I thought. We made some errors here and there but we had some timely hitting.”

The win snapped a nine-game winning streak for Solon (27-14) which hadn’t lost since being swept by Marion in a WAMAC doubleheader on June 30.

Marion (31-10) advance to the state tournament for the third time in program history and first since 2011.

“We knew we were going to be in for a fight and we were,” Solon coach Keith McSweeney said. “They just got the last at bat.”

The game was far from perfect as the teams combined for nine errors, six by Solon, and seven walks.

Both teams made their share of standout plays including a game-tying single by Payton Bandy in the bottom of the seventh and an outfield assist by Spencer Wegmann that kept the game tied 3-3 in the bottom of the inning.

“At the end of the day someone has to win but a game like that, you could just play all night,” McSweeney said. “Hats off to Marion.”

After rallying from a four-run deficit in a district final win over Central DeWitt on Monday the Spartans jumped to an early lead on Wednesday.

Cam Miller and Wegmann had back-to-back RBI singles in the second inning to give Solon an early 2-0 lead.

Marion tied the game with a pair of runs in the third inning on a Trevor Paulson two-run single and took its first lead of the game on another RBI single by Paulson in the fifth.

Solon pulled even in the seventh with Luke Ira led off with a double and scored two batters later on a bouncing single up the middle by Bandy.

“Luke gets the double and Bandy got him in,” McSweeney said. “He was really big at the plate for us.”

Solon had chances to go ahead in each of the next two innings putting a runner on second with less than two outs in both the eighth and ninth innings but couldn’t come up with a key hit.

“We couldn’t get that big hit in the late innings,” McSweeney said. “In extra innings we got guys in position we just couldn’t get that hit and they did and hats off to their guy, he put a good swing on it.”

Finally, it was Marion that got the big hit courtesy of Zielke.

Paulson reached on a one-out error and two batters later Zielke lined a game winning single that one-hopped the left field fence.

Luke Ira took the loss for Solon, allowing one run on one hit in 3 2/3 innings of relief.

Freshman Cam Miller posted another strong postseason start, allowing three runs on seven hits while striking out four in five innings.

“I think with Marion teams at the end of the day if you give them extra bases they are going to make you pay,” McSweeney said. “We pitched really well, we were uncharacteristic defensively, we booted seven balls and it’s hard to win a substate game when you do that.

Marion will face Dubuque Wahlert (26-15) in the 3A state tournament on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.

“I’m almost speechless,” Fish said. “I’ve never been more proud. I just feel like the pressure is just lifted of our back but our goal wasn’t just to get to the state tournament, we want to go down there and win some games.”

Solon               020  000  100  –  3  7  6

Marion           002  010  001  –  4  9  3

W – Luke Golla          L – Luke Ira

2B – SOL: Luke Ira. MAR: Nick Cole