PETERSBURG — As much excitement has found the Petersburg PORTA/A-C Central baseball team this season, the Bluejays continue to build a winning culture.
On May 21, PORTA beat Winchester West Central 5-2 to establish a new program record for wins in a season. On Memorial Day, the Bluejays beat Havana 9-0 in their final regular-season game to get to 29 wins. The 1996 team had the previous record with 27 wins.
Coach Brett Leischner’s team also has won 20 games for a third consecutive season, also a program record.
This run can be attributed to players such as seniors Levi Hoagland and Jett Karrick, along with junior Nash Donnan, but even they say the foundation was built before them.
“I think over the last few years, we’ve just had a core group of guys that have been bought in,” Karrick said. “It started three years ago with Nash Donnan’s older brother, Trace Donnan (and) Drew Atwater (2024 PORTA graduates). They really laid the foundation for us and taught us the hard work that we put in, we get results out here. We’re just happy to achieve it.”
No. 2 PORTA (29-6) begins its postseason on Wednesday in the Class 2A Williamsville Regional against No. 10 Beardstown (8-16). That winner will face either No. 3 Williamsville or No. 6 Pittsfield in the title game on Saturday at 11 a.m.
“Our goal from the beginning of the year was, one, the school record, and now we’re moving on to the regional,” Karrick said. “We want to win a regional, so that’s the goal. Obviously, that would help the win total, but we’re not really focused on the win total as we are being regional champs, so we’re going to work towards that.”
Strengths all over
So, what do the Bluejays do well? Pretty much everything, said sixth-year coach Leischner.
Their top-four pitchers are a combined 19-3 through 154⅔ innings. Through May 21:
The entire pitching staff has a 2.96 ERA, and that was before Calob Cass struck out eight in a complete-game shutout against Havana.
“That’s a real strength for this team is we’ve got four guys that can go and help us compete on any given day,” Leischner said. “We’ve just had great pitching the whole season, so that’s been one of the reasons why I’ve been so successful.”
Leischner credits the team pitching success to assistant coach Doug Blakeman.
“Doug Blakeman is, in my opinion, the best assistant coach in the area, so he deserves a whole lot of credit,” Leischner said of his head varsity assistant who also mainly works with the pitchers. “I mean if you look at our pitching stats, it speaks for itself.”
Not on the staff this season, while recovering from an injury, is Dave Leischner, the coach’s dad who, according to Brett Leischner, “the reason I’m in baseball and the reason why we’re doing all the things that we’re doing is I learned a lot from my dad and he’s my biggest fan.”
Unrelenting pressure
If getting runs are at a premium for opposing teams, the Bluejays’ offense surely has to be its kryptonite, right?
Wrong.
The Bluejays are hitting, through May 21, .314 (297-for-946) with 91 extra-base hits — including 12 home runs — 249 RBIs and have scored 291 runs through 34 games, almost nine runs per game.
“We’re never out of a game: as soon as we get rolling, we’re just on fire after that,” Hoagland said. “Some games that we’ve had this year, we’ve came up short and didn’t have enough innings to play; we got hot in the last inning and didn’t have time to come back.”
Leadoff hitter Kolin Johnson is hitting .459 (28-for-61), Karrick is at .418 (46-for-110) while Donnan is nipping at his heels at .414 (46-for-111). Hoagland’s .380 average (41-for-108) puts him atop a list of three Bluejays hitting .333 or better, including Ethan Hoagland and Brody Landon.
Hoagland’s claim that the Bluejays are never out of a game played out April 23, when PORTA rallied for nine runs in the final two innings to overcome a 9-1 deficit and beat Williamsville 10-9.
“We ended up walking that one off in the seventh,” Leischner said. “Williamsville’s a very good team — and hats off to them, they were playing really well — but it kind of showed the boys that as long as there’s not a final out, we can compete.”
Donnan credits his older brother’s group as setting a positive culture of the program that remains.
“The whole team gets along nice,” Donnan said. “We go hang out all the time and stuff, and it feels like we don’t have the age gap between us. The whole team just talks, and a young guy can give guidance to an old guy, and it still feels the same as a coach almost.
“We got a couple goofballs on the team, but when we show up to the field, we mean business. We always have fun, but we still want to win, and we always feel like when we walk into the field, we should win.”
This group of Bluejays celebrated win No. 28 in very low-key fashion. First, Leischner invited player families out on the field for a postgame speech, thanking them for their sacrifices to allow their sons to pursue their dreams. Then the team photo included those same players and their parents. After Leischner and his assistant coaches, including Doug Blakeman and Gavin Gronewold, cleaned up the field and raked the dirt, the team planned on celebrating with a team dinner.
After all, the postseason looms, and the team is on the same page: they all want a regional title. If it comes, then the Bluejays will set another goal (the regional champion will then play for the 2A Pleasant Plains Sectional). That’s just the mindset: don’t overlook anything.
“We like to stay in process, attack things head-on as they come, but we don’t want to look too far ahead,” Karrick said. “We got our goals in mind, and we’re going to give it our absolute best.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: PORTA baseball setting win records, now aims for postseason run
Reporting by Ryan Mahan, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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