Photos: Apple Valley Boys Baseball Cuts Down Eagan, 4-3

There’s hot. And then there’s Apple Valley hot.

Apple Valley’s red-hot Eagles continued their blazing streak through the best of the South Suburban Conference with a dramatic 4-3 baseball win at Eagan that was decided on the game’s final play.

Apple Valley led 4-3 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning and after getting the first two outs of the inning, it looked like the Eagles would earn the win sans drama.

But Eagan’s Brett Lindsey—No. 9 in the batting order—looped a single over the head of Apple Valley first baseman Reese Gopaul into shallow right field. That sent Eagan leadoff batter Eric Peterson to the plate and Peterson promptly ripped a pitch into deep left past the Apple Valley defense.

Lindsey raced past second and third and headed for home, only to find the ball already in the glove of Apple Valley senior catcher Aaron Gretz. Apple Valley’s Rhett Gopaul had tracked down the ball in left field, fired a strike to the cutoff man, who slammed a throw into Gretz who blocked the plate and easily nailed Lindsey out sending the Eagles to a happy celebration.

“That last defensive play was fantastic,” said Apple Valley head coach Jeremy Hendrickson. “It got over his head and he went to the wall and luckily there’s a short field here. And we turned it in and got it right to the cut man and the cut man threw a nice one-hopper to the catcher and the catcher tagged him out.”

The Eagles recorded their eighth straight win, including a 9-1 win over No. 5 Burnsville and a 20-2 thrashing of Rosemount.

“We’re on a roll,” said Hendrickson. “We had to figure it out mentally at the beginning because physically I knew we could do it. Now we’re just trying to figure out how to put it all together. And now we’ve been doing that eight games in a row.”

Apple Valley's big defensive stops easily overcame the team's three errors.

”We’ve been making no errors for a while now and that was kind of different for us to make some errors,” said Goodman. “We’ve really come along and pulled it together for defense. So it was a little different, but it worked for us.

“It was big for us, securing the third seed for the playoffs,” Goodman added.

Apple Valley improved to 11-5 in the conference and 13-6 overall, and wraps up the regular season with a game against Prior Lake (7-9, 10-9) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Alimagnet Park.

                                                                                                    R           H          E

Apple Valley            103            000            0            --            4            4            3

Eagan                        030            000            0            --           3            5            1