The No. 11 seed Douglas Tigers ended Bromfield’s quest for a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 5 baseball title with a 9-4 victory over the Trojans last Wednesday, June 8, in an away game at Soldiers Field in Douglas.
Bromfield was without its two best pitchers, who were unavailable for the playoff game, but Isaac Xu and Russel Kilkenny held the Tigers to seven hits, striking out three batters and walking four. The Trojans jumped to a two-run lead in the first two innings, but Douglas pulled ahead at the bottom of the second, 3-2. The game seesawed through the middle innings, but Bromfield “ran out of gas” in the bottom of the sixth and Douglas scored five runs. Pitching and fielding errors—a total of seven— weighed against the team. And although the Trojans attempted a rally in the seventh after third-baseman Lonnie Quirion, the coach’s son, drove in two runs with a hard-hit single, the comeback fizzled, leaving Bromfield with its first loss since late May.
Centerfielder Eli Labbe, first baseman Graham Benway, Kilkenny, and Quirion scored one run apiece.
Lonnie Quirion the elder has coached the team for seven years now and made it to the playoffs in five of those years. This was the first year a Bromfield’s baseball team ranked high enough in its division (No. 27 seed) to host a playoff game. Moreover, Quirion wrote the Press, the team made it further into the playoffs than any Trojans squad in recent history.
With only two seniors graduating this year, Quirion said the future looks bright. “The kids have now gotten a little taste of what it’s like to have a postseason run, and I know they’re motivated to go even further next season.”
