EAST LANSING — Hartland baseball had to learn the hard way how to come out on top in tight moments throughout the 2025 season.
That experience paid off on the ultimate stage in the Division 1 baseball state championship on Saturday, June 14, as Hartland topped Macomb Dakota, 5-3, in nine innings.
It wasn’t easy, though.
Hartland battled back from a two-run hole in the first inning, tying the game in the third inning. The Eagles had a runner 90 feet from scoring with less than two outs in the sixth and seventh innings, but couldn’t score the go-ahead run.
But, thanks to a stellar four-inning outing from reliever Logan Randall, Hartland kept Dakota at bay, leading to extra innings. Randall drove in a run in the top of the eighth inning with a sacrifice fly, which Dakota answered with a Jadon Ford RBI single. In the ninth, Hartland’s Caden See led off with a single, followed by a single from starting pitcher Michael Zielinski. A Dakota throwing error allowed See to score and Zielinski to reach third, and he eventually scored on a sacrifice fly.
“Man, I’ve never cried after a win, but it is the best feeling of my life,” Zielinski said through tears. “We worked so hard for this. There’s no feeling to describe how I am feeling right now.”
Randall shut the door in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Hartland the win in the Division 1 title game. It is Hartland’s second baseball state championship and first since 2015.
“Resilient when they strike first,” Hartland coach Brad Guenther said. “I’m proud of them because that was something maybe we weren’t so good at throughout the beginning of the year. Good job by my guys learning. That’s kind of what took us on this run.”
Hartland finished off a stellar postseason run in which the Eagles allowed a mere eight runs across seven playoff games. The Eagles entered the playoffs unranked by the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association (MHSBCA), but proved to be the best team in Division 1 on the final day of the season.
“We did that for each other,” Zielinski said. “We did that for our fans. We didn’t care about any rankings or anything that anyone said.”
It took a complete team effort for the Eagles to prevail in the back-and-forth extra-inning thriller.
Dakota tagged Zielinski for two runs in the first inning on RBI hits from Evan Kavalick and Luke DeMasse. Dakota looked primed to seize control after pitcher Ryan Petrovitch struck out the side in the second inning.
But Zielinski settled in with a quick second inning on the mound, and then stepped up at the plate. Randall reached on a single, then scored on a RBI double from See, and Zielinski tied the game with an RBI single up the middle. See finished with two hits, both eventually leading to Hartland runs.
“To see a guy whose confidence maybe wasn’t there last year come up big … you are like ‘When you are a senior, you are going to have the confidence, you are going to have the playing time,’ ” Guenther said. “For (See) to come up and have a big game in the biggest game of our lives is special for him. He’s never going to forget it.”
Dakota had only one runner reach scoring position from the second through the seventh innings. Hartland had chances with a runner at third and less than two outs in the sixth and seventh though. Petrovitch struck out Brayden and Dylan Crowe to escape the jam in the sixth inning, and then left the bases loaded in the seventh by inducing a groundout.
Randall briefly put Hartland ahead in the eighth, which Dakota answered before nearly ending it in the first extra inning. Following Ford’s RBI single, Dakota had the bases loaded with one out, putting the winning run 90 feet from home.
Randall induced a grounder from Jacob Gjonaj, and Dylan Crowe fielded it at third base, whipped it home to his brother Brayden, who then fired a rocket to first base to turn an inning-ending 5-2-3 double play.
“It feels amazing,” Randall said. “You’ve got the fans behind you, getting everyone up.”
Dakota’s defense couldn’t produce a similar clean inning in the top of the ninth, with a throwing error leading to the two winning Hartland runs.
“Two teams fought until the end and we made a few more mistakes than they did,” Dakota coach Angelo Plouffe said. “That’s how I would sum it up. But it was a great, hard-fought game. Someone had to lose. Someone had to win.”
Hartland finished the playoff run with an uneventful final inning thanks to Randall, who finished with one run allowed on two hits in four innings of relief.
Then, gloves went flying in the air and a bright yellow dogpile smothered Randall at the pitcher’s mound as Hartland celebrated from the top of the mountain.
“You are fighting all these distractions for 19 teenagers and six coaches,” Guenther said. “Keeping them together and playing for the community. It is a special run, for sure.”
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Jared Ramsey covers high school sports for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at jramsey@freepress.com; Follow Jared on X or Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MHSAA baseball finals: Hartland caps off ‘special run’ for Division 1 champions
Reporting by Jared Ramsey, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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