MADISON HEIGHTS -- For 17 of his 18 years of coaching baseball, Lamphere’s Adam Wooley will admit he’s been a bit uptight.

On Monday on the Rams’ home field he tried a different approach and it paid off big time.

A “loosey-goosey” squad from Lamphere defeated Lutheran North, 10-6, to claim a Division 2 baseball district championship.

“It was all about coming out and having fun,” Wooley said. “We wanted to celebrate and do a little bit of whacky things. We wanted to have fun today.

“This is totally new for me,” Wooley added. “Anyone that knows me they see me walking around with a scowl on my face and pretty intense. I tried to flip the script a little bit.”

A large part into wanting to change things up was how young of a team the Rams field.

Seven of Lamphere’s nine starters are either freshmen or sophomores.

“We didn’t know what we had out here coming into the season,” Wooley said. “The game today was indicative of how we’ve played all year. We grind and grind away. We try to outwork and outlast our opponent. Today we did that.”

The Rams were led offensively by Justin Mexico (2-for-4, four RBI), Stevie Marson (2-for-3, three RBI), Dylan Chargo (double, two RBI) and Jake Malek (3-for-4).

“I told them before no matter if we were up 12 or down 12 we were going to stay on a positive run,” Wooley said. “We embraced that mentality. I’m so proud of these hard working, gritty players.”

Cory Johnston got the win, going 6 2/3 innings, allowing one earned run and striking out five. He raised his record to 8-2 on the season and lowered his earned-run average to 0.92. Ryan Barrett got the save.

“We just gave away too many runs early,” Lutheran North coach Mark Brown said. “A bunch of errors and walks. It’s not our normal good defensive performance. We just gave away runs and runs and runs and runs.

“I think we made more errors today than we have all season,” Brown added. “The momentum was taken away and we were deflated. We battled back a little bit, but it was too little too late. It’s very disappointing.”

The district title was the Rams' first since 2014.

Lamphere will meet St. Clair in a regional semifinal on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at Armada. The Saints beat Richmond, 5-4, to advance.

 
 
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