Gaylord Baseball Club travels to Petoskey, fights hard in final tournament of 2022

PETOSKEY — The peak of summer baseball season is here.

Little League's across the country have begun their state tournaments while travel and Legion teams eye their final games and tournaments of the summer as the calendar hits the last half of July.

Gaylord Baseball Club, an 18U team made up of area players from Gaylord, Johannesburg-Lewiston and Gaylord St. Mary's, is one of those teams wrapping up their season, and this past weekend marked their last tournament of the 2022 summer as they traveled to Petoskey for the Sunset Showdown.

Hosted by the Petoskey AA Royals, the tournament was held from July 15-17 and included some of the top travel teams in the state, including the LCB Legends, the Mount Pleasant Drillers, Michigan's Premier, Motor City Mayhem, Midland Berryhill and USA Prime Hollis.

GBC got off to a rocky start, dropping the first two games of pool play to Berryhill and Premier West before getting back on track with a 12-0 victory against USA Prime Hollis on Saturday morning.

Former St. Mary's and current Delta College player Chirs Koscielniak led the offense in the win, going 2-for-2 with two runs scored and a run batted in. Quinn Shultz, another former Snowbird and current Delta Pioneer, went 2-for-3 with a double, a run and an RBI.

In their final game on Saturday, Gaylord had a chance to finish the tournament with a 2-2 record as they took a one-run lead over the Westside Rattlers into the top of the sixth inning, but the Rattlers would score five runs in the what ended up being the bottom of the final inning to take an 8-4 victory and send Gaylord home.

St. Mary's Dillon Croff and Johannesburg-Lewiston's Colin Basinski showed up consistently throughout the four games, with Croff finishing the tournament a combined 3-for-9 from the plate with two RBI and two runs scored and Basinski finishing 3-for-7 with two RBI and one run scored.

The team is made up of a mix of players from Gaylord-area schools. St. Mary's Cathedral has the most representation with nine current or former players, followed by Gaylord High School with six and J-L with three. Two players come from other Northern Michigan schools, including Garrett Purdy from Central Lake and Jason Kihn from Traverse City St. Francis.

GBC is a part of American Legion Baseball, taking on teams from across Northern and Mid-Michigan. Following the conclusion of the Sunset Showdown, the team had amassed an 8-10-1 overall record through June and July with one final game remaining.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Gaylord Baseball Club fights hard in final tournament of 2022