Baseball Playoffs: Riverside Academy advances to quarterfinals with road win at Sacred Heart

BASEBALL BRACKETS

In 2017, Riverside Academy won the Division III state baseball championship under Frank Cazeaux, now the coach at Archbishop Rummel, where he also won a 5A state title in 1997.

The Rebels reached the Division III quarterfinals in 2018.

Since then, it had been a struggle.

The struggle is over.

Riverside is back in the quarterfinals after registering a 6-4 road win in Ville Platte at No. 6 Sacred Heart in the Select Division IV regional round Wednesday.

The 11th-seeded Rebels scored four runs in the top of the second inning and never trailed.

The Trojans got a run in the third to make it 4-1 but Riverside answered with two runs in the top of the fourth to take a commanding 6-1 lead. Sacred Heart responded with two runs in the bottom of the fourth and one in the fifth inning but that was all.

Senior Luke Hymel homered, singled and had a bases loaded walk and drove in three runs. Eighth-grader Brody Vicknair each had two hits and three RBI. Eighth-grader Cameron Matt added two hits. Hymel pitched a complete game, allowing four runs on nine hits with a walk and seven strikeouts, using 100 pitches for his eighth win of the season.

Veteran coach Marty Luquet, who took Destrehan to a pair of state championship games, has his young Rebels in a great spot. Luquet, who has now won 495 games in his illustrious career as a coach at John F. Kennedy, O. Perry Walker, St. James and Destrehan, is thrilled with the progress his team has made in his third year coaching the Rebels.

“We’re so young with one senior leader in Hymel for us,” Luquet said. “He wasn’t sharp but he just battled despite not having his best stuff. He did enough and we did enough to get by. He kept making big pitches when we needed it. Luke had a big day at the play. Vicknair had a bases-clearing double in the second inning which was huge, the biggest of the game for us. It was fun, a good high school game.”

Briggs Ardoin had two hits and an RBI for the Trojans. Ardoin took the loss, going four innings, allowing six runs on six hits with two walks and a strikeout.

Riverside (20-8-1) advances to the quarterfinals to meet the winner of No. 3 Glenbrook and No. 14 Vermilion Catholic, who play Friday at Glenbrook.

“We’re getting a chance to be in the elite group of our class in one of the toughest divisions in the state,” Luquet said. “To be in that group is quite an accomplishment for us.”

FINAL
RB 040 200 0 6 8 0
SH 001 210 0 4 9 1