WARDSVILLE - The last time the Blair Oaks baseball team was on the field for a game at the Falcon Athletic Complex, the Falcons were celebrating a Class 3 state quarterfinal win against Lawson.
That day was May 22, 2019. Quite a bit has happened since then.
Less than six hours later, an EF-3 tornado passed through the Jefferson City area. Less than a week later, Blair Oaks won the Class 3 state championship. And most recently, the coronavirus pandemic wiped out the 2020 Missouri high school baseball season.
But baseball is finally back this summer, and Blair Oaks started its summer league schedule with a bang, defeating the Macon Tigers 12-2 in eight innings.
"What they showed here is exactly what we wanted to see," Blair Oaks coach Justin Buschjost said. "We took care of business here. I just wanted them to go out and play. I just wanted them to have a chance to play and have some fun."
This was the Falcons' first game experience since March 13 in a Jamboree against Jefferson City, Helias and Fatima. The Falcons had a few more practices after that, then COVID-19 concerns halted all activities for the rest of the spring. Blair Oaks resumed practice last week before facing its first opponent in almost three months.
"It was a big difference," Buschjost said. "That Jamboree was pretty rough for us. But they came out loose, and I had hoped that they were ready to go, because we haven't played baseball in a long time.
"Besides the Jamboree, these guys haven't played since last summer, most likely. They handled it the right way. They came out and were ready to play."
Lane Libbert, whose offensive outburst in the state playoffs last season helped propel the Falcons to the Final Four, opening the scoring in the bottom of the first inning with an RBI bloop single. That hit scored Ian Nolph to put Blair Oaks ahead 1-0.
In the second inning, Macon started the inning with three straight walks, but Drew Byrd came in to pitch and got three straight flyouts, allowing just one run to score to tie the game.
"The game could have gone a lot differently," Buschjost said. "They hit two flyballs right at guys and got a sac fly in there. You get out of a big jam like that, it helps turn the tide."
Byrd pitched four innings of relief to earn the win, totaling just 33 pitches. He only needed the minimum of three pitches to get through the third inning.
"He was spot-on," Buschjost said. "That's exactly what we needed."
With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the second, Nolph delivered the big hit of the game. With runners taking off on contact, he blooped a double into shallow right field that scored all three runners to put Blair Oaks back on top 4-1.
"The ball was carrying out earlier in the game, and their outfield was playing pretty deep," Buschjost said. "He just found the right spot and blooped it in."
The Falcons added two runs in the third and four more in the fourth to push their lead to 10-1. Lane Libbert came through with a two-run single in the fourth, giving him three RBI for the game.
Wil Libbert, the only freshman on the Blair Oaks varsity roster, finished 2-for-5 at the plate. He came through with an RBI double in a two-run seventh inning to make the score 12-2.
"In the Jamboree, the only chance we got to see him, he was pretty nervous," Buschjost said. "But he is a really good baseball player and he's only going to get better."
Levi Haney had two singles and one double for the Falcons. Nolph also had a mulithit game, added a single to go with his bases-clearing double.
Kamron Morriss, one of the Falcons' seniors who started at catcher, came in to pitch two scoreless innings to finish the game.
"I asked him and he said he pitched once as a freshman and then he pitched once as a sophomore," Buschjost said. "He's catching a lot and we knew that was his strongest position. It's hard to do both (pitcher and catcher). He was joking around, saying he could pitch, and we need to save as many arms as possible."
Blair Oaks wanted to save arms for today's doubleheader against Helias 1, which starts at 6 p.m. at the Falcon Athletic Complex. Although bragging rights are the only thing at stake with today's games, they'll feature two teams that could have met earlier this spring in the Class 4 District 10 championship game.
"In the past, if we've ever made a big deal out of a game, we have played really uptight and haven't performed," Buschjost said. "Going back to last season, something we always stressed was to play loose and have fun, and usually things will work out."