A CINDERELLA STORY FOREVER: After 12-inning marathon, No. 6 Fillmore topples No. 1 Ark-Can’s State Championship-winning empire, completes improbable comeback with Class D title in memorable 5-4 win

HORNELL — On April 28, it was the game that got away.

At Timmerman Field in Arkport, an early lead by the Eagles of Fillmore was vacated by the host Wolves of Arkport-Canaseraga in exchange for seven unanswered runs, which ultimately led to an 8-5 win for the defending Class D State Champions in their first and only epic clash of the Spring.

The Eagles weren’t going to forget about that day.

They couldn’t. Because there was an ongoing thought in the back of their minds. A possible future that would perhaps feature another opportunity down the road to go one-on-one with them again. More importantly, to make all the wrongs from that summer-esque night all right again as a completely different team if the chance to take them on once more ever came to light.

As the remainder of the season panned out and progressed towards the finish line, and the Sectional standings began to take a much clearer shape, Fillmore went on to finish the remainder of their slate with a winning season, all behind a record of 10-7.

As for Arkport-Canaseraga, a finish of 14-1 overall.

In regards to how that translated for the Class D playoff picture, there was no question that the Wolves were going to be granted the top seed. But in the same swing, the postseason outlook also told a very visually appealing tale for the Eagles. Their final position was five seeds further down, at No. 6. That only meant one thing, and one thing only: The Eagles were on one side of the bracket, and the Wolves were on the other.

Only one possible outcome was going to come from this particular scenario. Yes, you guessed it. That was a date in the Class D Finals.

The Sectional journey can be a long, but prosperous one for teams that desperately seek to claim championship nobility. For both Fillmore and Arkport-Canaseraga, their treks were of great fortune. The baseball astrologers were indeed on each of their sides, with the Eagles and Wolves garnering their three required victories to punch their tickets to the final dinner table that awaited at Maple City Park in Hornell.

That day couldn’t come soon enough. After a near-complete washout of championship games on Saturday, the anticipation continued to build an extra day until the diamond was dry and the forecast was much more ideal.

On Sunday, when patience began to wear thin, there was finally no more waiting and no more hiding. The Eagles were going to fulfill their wish to play the Wolves once again. This time, for everything.

But it wasn’t just your ordinary Sunday afternoon at the ballpark either. No sir. Every single parking lot in and around Hornell Senior High School was filled to the brim. Even the grass patches next to the road running congruent with the ballpark itself, along with very narrow patches of green next to the main lots in front of the school. All the little crevasses were overwhelmingly congested with cars.

The amount of people that furrowed each baseline was extraordinary. At one point in the later stages, that number wildly increased to include both LeRoy and Wellsville baseball teams and their respective crowds, who were next to take the stage later on in the evening.

Little did every single person in attendance know that they were going to become one of many star witnesses to one of the greatest games to ever take place in the rich history of the famed Maple City Park.

You just had to be there to experience every single emotion known to man that resonated through the entire ballpark. The jubilation, the anguish, the anxiety, all of it. All the highs, and all the lows that the Class D Championship game featured were endured in full. There simply was no in-between.

That elongated across 12 straight innings.

Yes, you read that correctly.

12. Straight. Innings.

Fillmore’s Damon Potter and Arkport-Canaseraga’s Micah Marvin — two of the Southern Tier’s most prominent pitchers, pushed their limits and gave it everything they possibly could. For a good chunk of time, it was the Wolves that assumed control behind Marvin, who went on to toss four straight shutout innings against the Eagles while the offense continued to hit one of many strides to take a 4-0 lead.

But despite the minor bumps in the road that set the Eagles back, they remained focused and locked in to the task at hand. To turn the momentum in their favor, the formula always has to start with one. Isaac Wilcox served as the perfect example of that, becoming Fillmore’s first base-runner in the fifth inning. He then proceeded to become the first run to come across for the No. 6 seeds, eliminating any possibility of a shutout for the Wolves.

That run served as the genesis of one of the more amazing acts of resiliency of this season, as the Eagles matched every wavelength, dotted every I and crossed every T on the paper to issue an incredible rally from behind in the last three innings of play, pitchpoling what was a four-run deficit upside down to bridge the gap and equal the difference in the top of the seventh.

From that point on, extra innings were needed. Five of them to be exact.

All through the free baseball timeline, Potter and Marvin continued to wheel and deal until they could not anymore, as both pitchers were relieved of their duties in the 10th inning in favor of their No. 2 counterparts — Jared Boon and Caden Carey, to finish the task at hand.

Each team had attempted to fulfill their obligation in tilting the balance of power in their direction. For the Eagles, head coach Kaiden Bowers’ plan of action was going to be one of aggressive nature. The very best opportunity he foresaw to strike, the second-year coach was going to take it at an instant.

“You can’t think about it being extras. It’s still baseball, right?” he said. “We still have to score runs, they still have to score runs. We still have to have good at-bats. Once they started to settle in, we kind of found our form out there and actually played our game of baseball. If we could get a guy on, we were going to be aggressive and we knew that if we could get one in the top half, we had what it took to close the door.”

That one they had in order to close the door came in the top of the 12th inning. Fillmore had received the best of both worlds from their lead-off man Jared Boon, to not only complete their rally from behind, but to slam the book shut in the bottom half of the frame with the bases loaded.

The Eagles had gone on to tell one of the greatest Cinderella stories ever told.

And it will be told over and over again.

The six-seeded Fillmore Eagles went on to slay the New York State dragon in Class D. On top of an incredible display of pitching from Damon Potter on the hill, it was Jared Boon’s game-winning performance across both phases at the plate and on the mound in the 12th inning that aided in the cementation of an all-time performance in Section V postseason history, as they weaved their way towards the Class D Championship title — the first under Bowers, with a 5-4 win over No. 1 Arkport-Canaseraga.

“It’s still sinking in, and it just shows the heart of these 16 kids,” said Bowers. “I can’t say enough about how they’ve worked all season, including the last four weeks. They have really bought in to what we’ve been trying to implement. Something changed in the last few weeks where we have just started to find our groove. I honestly don’t know. This is all on the boys. This was all on them, and that is absolutely amazing. I’m speechless, I really am.”

Bowers continued, saying that “No one thought we were going to come in and spank Arkport-Canaseraga. We knew it was going to be a tough game, and once we clawed back and made it tight there. We have been in these kinds of games so much, and we know what it’s like. We were starting to feel more and more comfortable in them, because this has been our last two, three weeks of baseball. That was the message. We know what we had to do, and we still had to take it pitch by pitch.”

Their championship-winning destiny could not have been fulfilled without the aid of Damon Potter, who was selected as the Class D Tournament’s MVP. And for good reason. After initially relinquishing a 4-0 lead through the first three innings to the Wolves, the Fillmore (14-7) senior hunkered down and delivered a masterful comeback outing, holding Arkport-Canaseraga scoreless across the next seven innings before being pulled part way in the 10th.

Potter finished with seven strikeouts and three walks.

As for that 4-0 lead however, the Wolves got their engines firing on all cylinders against the Eagles defense after the two aces on the mound delivered a 1-2-3 first inning. After the second of four straight 1-2-3 innings tossed by Marvin for the top-seeds, the momentum transitioned to the dish where the Wolves broke through with the first of two two-run frames, as Devin Moran blasted a shot straight into right field to score both runners that were occupying the bases leading into his at-bat.

The advantage was doubled once more with back-to-back singles off the bats of John Marcus and Aydan Button in the bottom of the third inning, as the two belted an RBI single each into right and left field, respectively to plate both Bryer Drake and Marvin to close up shop on another positive note.

The two teams traded a scoreless fourth inning of action before a slight intensification was brought to the surface by the Eagles in the fifth, led by Isaac Wilcox as the team’s first base-runner. After he reached base on an infield smack that turned into an error from the Arkport-Canaseraga defense, he eventually worked his way over to third base before streaking home on a Connor McCumiskey sacrifice to deep right field.

Fillmore built on it once more with their backs against the wall, as James Hillman made sure the opportunity was worth every penny by dropping a gigantic two-out double into the outfield. With Brayden Hennard already occupying one of the bases, he flew around and came home to slice their deficit right in half.

After another threat by the Wolves was voided out by the Eagles in the bottom of the sixth, the No. 6 seeds capped off their comeback with two major pieces to the puzzle scratching their way across the plate, with Wilcox and McCumiskey both reaching base. On the next two at-bats, Fillmore struck gold with a high bouncing shot off the bat of Avery Potter past first base and into left field to score Wilcox, and then a clutch 4-3 groundout from Hennard to score McCumiskey from third to tie the game.

Bowers says that the bottom of the order made a whole world of difference not only in their championship-winning victory, but across their entire Sectional adventure.

“The difference in Class D is depth. We’ve been talking about our bottom of the lineup and how it has to produce in order for us to compete against the Arkport-Canaseragas of the world,” he said. “The same was true against Elba, and the same was true about tonight where the bottom of the order didn’t roll over and die. They’re the ones that played the roles contributing to these rallies. That’s just being a dog, going up there and competing, and just saying that this guy isn’t going to beat me. That’s the difference.”

With the playing surface now officially level, the battle to the end became even longer, as Fillmore and Arkport-Canaseraga were locked into a cage fight that lasted the next four innings. In the midst of it, a massive evasion of Wolves’ best opportunity to win the game themselves in the bottom of the 10th inning.

After Potter was pulled in favor of Boon, the freshman hurler for Fillmore went on to face head on a monstrous 3-2 count against Caden Carey in the lead-off position for the Wolves, along with game-winning runs standing on second and third base. On his final pitch of the at-bat, Boon coerced Carey to strike out looking, to captain their navigation off the field in a hurry.

The madness ensued through the 11th inning of play until the Eagles finally laid the lumber down on a ball from Boon that skied to deep right field in the final extra inning. After the strike at the plate, a miscommunication in the outfield then occurred, which resulted in the ball dropping to the ground. Avery Potter was the lone runner standing on base before Boon reached himself, as he scored on the play to officially give Fillmore their first lead of the game.

Although the Wolves were able to establish one more opportunity to overcome the tide, the Eagles remained vigilant and resilient to close out the evening strongly, leaving all three Arkport-Canaseraga base-runners behind Boon on the rubber on base, with the freshman registering a game-ending strike-out to send their side of the field into instant pandemonium.

To pair with his 2-for-6 outing at the dish, Boon concluded just over two innings of relief with four strikeouts and five walks to score the victory in relief of Potter’s nine-inning no-decision.

For Bowers, they were two efforts he cannot possibly be more proud of.

“Damon has matured so much in his last three or four starts. The message with him, he throws hard and he has good stuff. The problem with that is when guys can’t hit off him, his pitch counts climb quickly. We’ve been really trying to hone in on him to attack, attack, attack. So when we finally get a game like this, he’s not at his max in the fifth inning, and we have him later on in the 10th,” he said. “Damon was a dog out there, his compete was next level and even when we got down 4-0, he knew he still had to keep them up there. He knew one more run could be the difference. Then Jared Boon comes in and he hasn’t pitched in three, four weeks because he’s had some arm trouble. But he wanted this one today, and he was just as good to help us shut the door.”

Each team supplied 10 hits during their time inside the batter’s box, with Wilcox and his 3-for-5 outing for the Eagles leading the charge. Connor McCumiskey concluded with two hits of his own.

For Arkport-Canaseraga, John Marcus and Devin Moran led the way with three hits each, while Eli Merry and Aydan Button each had two to pitch in. On the mound, Marvin concluded his no-decision with eight strikeouts. In relief, Carey finished up with five strikeouts and two walks of his own.

The next stop for Fillmore now is McDonough Field in Geneva next weekend, as they now represent Section V in Class D in the Far West Regional on Saturday in a contest that will pit them against Section VI champion Franklinville. First pitch between the Panthers and Eagles is slated for a 12 p.m. commencement.

“We’ve just trying to build a culture here and build a program that’s fun and they all compete on a regular basis,” Bowers said. “This has been so fun for the guys, and this has been a great opportunity to make it this far. We’ll go back to work tomorrow once we’ve had a chance to digest this, but anything is possible. We’ll keep plugging away at practices and see what Saturday brings.”

Fillmore 000 011 200 001 — 5 10 0

Arkport-Canaseraga 022 000 000 000 — 4 10 3

FIL – Damon Potter (7K, 3BB), Jared Boon (WP, 10) (4K, 5BB) and Connor McCumiskey.

A-C – Micah Marvin (8K), Caden Carey (LP, 10) (5K, 2BB) and Bryer Drake.