North Ridgeville Rangers Blue beat North Ridgeville TLC Rays to advance to Hot Stove state tournament

SHEFFIELD LAKE — The Class G (ages 11-12) regional championship game at Volunteer Field on Sunday afternoon might as well have been a family reunion. The North Ridgeville Rangers Blue and North Ridgeville TLC Rays battled back-and-forth for seven innings until the Rangers' Landan Cowin walked it off in the bottom of the seventh with a one-out double to the fence for an 11-10 win. "It felt good to share a game like this with all of our friends (on TLC). It was pretty special," Cowin said. "I really didn't look up to see Ben (Marflak) rounding third and heading home. I knew I just needed to make good contact." The Rangers improved to 14-3 and will face the Sheffield Venom in Alliance next weekend at the state tournament after the Venom's 8-7 win over the Wellington Renegades. "So many kids from both teams play other sports together. This was really special," Rangers coach Jamie Cleveland said. "We just had to keep getting good at-bats and keep scratching out runs. That was definitely a great at-bat by Landan to win it." After five innings of play, nothing had been decided with the score tied at 5 TLC got two runs in the first with Kian Cole and Joash Pruitt scoring. Cole reached on an error in the third and came home on Brogan Comerford's triple. The Rays got one in the fourth after Bentley Comerford walked and scored on a Cole double. The Rangers also got two in the first when Gary Cunningham doubled and scored after Parker Cleveland reached on an error. Cleveland scored on Owen Stevens' double to right-center. The Rangers put up a 3-spot in the third when Cleveland walked and scored on a groundout, and the final two runs came home when Ben Marflak launched a two-run homer down the left-field line to score Curtis Crumpler, who walked ahead of him. The sixth inning was big for both teams, as the TLC Rays seemed to take control by scoring five times on just two hits. The runs for TLC came from Pruitt drawing a bases-loaded walk and Brogan Comerford knocking in a pair with a single. Another run came home on a throwing error and Macsen Letner sent a run home with a groundout. The Rangers rallied, scoring five times in the bottom half of the inning, getting a run on a wild pitch, a single by Logan Kowalczyk, a ground ball from Cunningham, a single by Cleveland and a double from Lucas Thomascik. The Rangers' relief pitcher Owen Steven kept TLC off the board, getting three ground balls, wrapped around a Bentley Comerford single. TLC's Letner got a pop out to start the inning but followed that up with a full-count walk to Marflak. Cowin split the gap in left-center to send his team to the state tourney. "This was such a great win, but to have it go down back-and-forth between two Ridgeville teams was something special and meant a lot." TLC coach Gary Brown said. "These boys worked hard to try to get back to state for the third time in a row. If we couldn't go, we definitely wanted another Ridgeville team to get there."