Hartland baseball coach Brad Guenther said he took two deep breaths before leaving the dugout to talk with senior Michael Bernardi.
The Eagles (20-10) outlasted host Novi (23-9) 1-0 in a pitcher’s duel during the Kensington Lakes Activities Association championship on Thursday, May 21, but Bernardi made things interesting in the fourth inning.
Just after taking the lead, the pitcher walked two Novi batters before giving up a single to Colin Bennett, the sixth-ranked 2027 recruit in Michigan, according to PrepBaseballReport.com, to load the bases with no outs.
That’s when the old catcher instincts kicked in for Guenther, who visited Bernardi on the mound to offer some encouragement.
Not only was the league championship on the line, but it was also a chance for the defending state champions to avenge last year’s loss to rival Howell in this game.
Bernardi needed to settle in before Novi blew the game open.
“I actually told him we were going to get out of it,” said Guenther, a Hall of Fame catcher at Wayne State. “It was a good opportunity for him to execute, and if the ball bounces the right way, he’d get out of it with no damage. That was my message to him, to slow down their momentum. … The bases were loaded, so let’s find a way to minimize and only give up one.”
Bernardi found a way, pitching to contact for a fly out, striking out the next batter and then getting help from a lucky bounce for the third out. Novi’s Owen Onder put the ball in play, but it bounced off the turf and tagged teammate Adam Kandah in the chest just before he crossed home plate with the tying run.
Bernardi didn’t need luck after that. He was nearly perfect the rest of the way, throwing a complete game with four strikeouts while allowing just three hits and three walks for the Eagles’ first seven-inning shutout of the season.
“My confidence definitely got higher after that, especially after that inning as I kept executing my pitches,” Bernardi said. “Plus, it helped that guy ran into the ball, which was a huge momentum swing for us and a down swing for them. It was very high-pressure, but you’ve got to execute and do the best you can do, and that’s what I did today.”
Novi pitcher Johnny Woytowich was equally impressive, striking out nine, walking none and allowing just three hits.
The Wildcats’ lone mistake came early in the fourth inning when Carson Perkins’ line drive to center field scored Preston Spisz.
“We told Johnny to just pound them in hard and throw the breaking stuff away, and he did a great job other than a couple of hits,” Novi coach Rick Green said. “They got the stolen base that got them that run, the only run of the game, but he’s been doing that all year, and he’s only a sophomore, so he’s only going to get better.”
Woytowich threw only 92 pitches, 69 for strikes, though he hit two of the 25 batters he faced. Bernardi needed just 102 pitches despite the fourth-inning jam.
“That’s baseball,” Green added. “When you get the bases loaded when a guy’s throwing a good game like Bernardi was, it’s tough not to score, especially when it was a defensive kind of day with the wind blowing in and the ball was not going anywhere. It was a pitcher’s kind of day, and my hat goes off to both of them because they both pitched tremendously and put on a good show.”
That’s what you’d expect from the KLAA championship. The past three Division 1 state champions have come from the league, including Novi in 2023, Northville in 2024 and Hartland in 2025.
So if you’re playing in this game, there’s a good chance you’ll also be playing on the final day of the season, even if you suffer a loss like the Eagles did to Howell a year ago.
Fortunately for Bernardi and his teammates, they came out on the winning side this time. He took his coach’s advice, kept his cool and worked through a tight spot. His confidence never wavered, and that’s all Hartland needed to get past Woytowich, who also brought his A-game.
“Sometimes you just got to go out and say, ‘Hey man, it might look really bad, and it might feel like it’s the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you’ve got nine dudes out here with you and everyone in the dugout fighting for you,’” Guenther said. “That’s what a lot of the mound visits are about, building them up and making sure they believe in themselves.”
Brandon Folsom covers high school sports in metro Detroit for Hometown Life. Follow him on his new X.com account at @folsomwrites.
This article originally appeared on Hometownlife.com: Hartland baseball outlasts Novi in KLAA championship pitching duel
Reporting by Brandon Folsom, Hometownlife.com / Hometownlife.com
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
