New Haven Baseball Finishes Second At Districts

The Shamrocks (9-9) turned the page this season, finishing as the Class 1 District 9 Runner-Ups. They capped their year in the championship on May 21, where they battled No. 1 St. Elizabeth (21-7) as the second seed.

Anthony Groner was the first to take the mound for New Haven. The freshman gave up six hits and two earned runs.

Jacob Gerdes came out of the bullpen in the bottom of the third. He fired two strikeouts while allowing five hits and three earned runs.

Cole Nieman reached first base twice, while Jacob Gerdes singled once.

Trevor Hinten and Weston Hecktor each took a walk.

Head Coach Austin Peirick had nothing but praise for the tough fight New Haven gave towards the Hornets. “That St. Elizabeth team is a phenomenal baseball team, all the way through their order of great hitters,” he remarked. “That pitcher, [Eli Kemna], could go toe-to-toe with anybody. His stuff was electric, but I didn’t see our guys back down or put our shoulders down at all. Nobody had this expectation for us outside of us. Our expectation was to compete in every single game, and that’s all we can do.”

As of press time, MaxPreps ranked St. Elizabeth second in Class 1, tenth in the Missouri-Columbia area and 69th in Missouri. 

Five senior players capped their high school careers against the Hornets: Ryan Steinbeck, Jace Ritchie, Michael McFerrin, Reid Lueckenhoff and Gerdes.

Coach Peirick could not thank them enough for laying the groundwork for the team’s future. He also hopes his seniors will use the lessons learned from the bases as stepping stones in their lives. “Day in and day out, you know you’re going to make mistakes and hard decisions,” Peirick explained. “You’re going to make mistakes as a father, as a husband, but what you got to do is you gotta be willing. In baseball, you gotta make that next play. You gotta make the next play a positive one, and that’s no different in the real world. And in regular life, when you make those mistakes, it’s how do you grow from that? How do you grow from mistakes? How do you grow from failure?”

New Haven made history in 2025 with their first district championship appearance in seven years and winning record in seventeen.

Peirick could not have been prouder of the progress his boys had made. He shared, “From the get-go, our mindset was growth—every day, we had to get better… Any moment that we had a miscue or a positive play… [it was] a learning moment, and the idea was these boys had to be open and receptive to that, which I thought they did a really good job of.”

The Shamrocks went 3-4 at home and 4-4 on the road while scoring an average of 4.6 runs per game and allowing 6.1.

After rewriting the script this year, Peirick and his boys look to continue changing the narrative in the pages to come. Their story is just beginning, and there is no better start than a second-place finish at districts. “I think [for] a lot of people out in the community, it took them a while to jump on board,” Peirick stated. “I think there’s a lot of people in the area that still didn’t take New Haven baseball seriously. We were just fluking into close games against teams in the conference. But I think [against St. Elizabeth], it showed that it wasn’t a fluke; it was just something we were building towards. So, I got to give a lot of credit to the boys for buying in. It takes a lot of buy-in to be able to say, ‘Okay, we know we’re going to fail, but we have to fail to get better.’ So, I think that was our mindset all season.”