PREP BASEBALL: Suwannee falls to Island Coast in Class 4A state semifinals

FORT MYERS ­ — No team has been able to cool off Suwannee for nearly two months.

That changed on Monday.

Island Coast pitcher Kevin Martinez stopped the Bulldogs cold in their tracks, time and time again. He struck out 11 — seven looking — and was only slowed down by a lightning delay. The Flagler commit’s stellar performance was more than enough to send the Gators to their first state title game, also thanks in part to a lineup that raked from the very beginning with four runs in the first inning, three in the second and two more in the third.

Eli Rodriguez went 3 for 4 with an RBI to lead the offense and Jordi Guerrerro also drove in two runs to help Island Coast take down Suwannee 9-2 in the Class 4A state semifinals Monday night at Hammond Stadium in a game that saw two lightning delays that combined to postpone the game for more than five hours. It snapped the Bulldogs’ 15-game winning streak that began on March 30 and sent the Gators to the Class 4A state championship Tuesday night against Jensen Beach, which beat Dunedin 2-0 after 2 a.m. on Tuesday.

Suwannee came up short in the state Final Four for a third time — second in the last four years — and still has never played for a state championship.

“You never want your season to end. If it’s gonna end, this is a good place for it to end,” Suwannee head coach Justin Bruce said. “This is a group of seniors we have. They’ve poured in everything to this program for four years. They’ve poured into the younger guys, and there’s a lot for the younger guys to be able to see, just on how to do it the right way, doing things the right way, because it matters.

“This group is going to go off and do a lot of really good things, and I can’t be more proud of the senior group and the season these guys have had.”

Martinez allowed six hits and a walk, throwing 98 pitches before exiting after the second lightning delay for the Gators (23-7). He returned after the first delay lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes already up 9-1, only surrendering an RBI single to Camdon Frier in the fifth inning after Payton Waters had an RBI double in the fourth prior to the storm.

Dylan Masters finished off the Bulldogs (24-5) in the seventh, only giving up a one-out single to Tyson Greene. But Martinez was the star, benefitting from a wide strike zone to slow down a Suwannee lineup that entered the game with seven batters hitting over .300.

“He was working away,” Gill said of Martinez. “He was getting calls on the outside corner that we thought were balls, we were just watching them. We hate to see it, we thought they were balls, but we had to be more aggressive, and we weren’t.”

Gill got rocked from the start as Rodriguez led off the game with a double to kick off a big first inning. Alabama commit Jake Mueller was then hit by a pitch and FAU commit Emilio Gonzalez reached on an error, allowing Rodriguez to score the game’s first run.

That set up a two-RBI double by Guerrero, who scored two batters later on Tommy Bryne’s RBI single for a 4-0 lead. Gill faced the entire lineup in the first inning.

“I thought the game started out exactly how you would hope that something would, when you get here for the first time,” Island Coast head coach Clint Montgomery said. “When you score four runs in the first inning and kind of get us some momentum there, was a great start for us. Any time we get four runs with Kevin (Martinez) on the mound, we feel pretty comfortable.

“We did a great job attacking the next few innings to extend the lead. It worked out really good with the weather delays. If it was a 3-2 game, it would’ve been a lot scarier.”

Bruce kept trusting Gill, but things got worse in the second inning. Rodriguez led off with a single and then scored from first base when Martinez hit a grounder to Gill, who tried to throw Rodriguez out at second base but sent it flying into center field instead.

Martinez made it all the way to third base thanks to Suwannee centerfielder Carston Palmer overthrowing catcher Easton Kirby at the plate on an attempt to throw out Rodriguez. Mueller then crushed an RBI double to make it 6-0, and he eventually scored on a double play before the inning was through.

Bruce said he never contemplated pulling Gill down 6-0.

“We made a couple of errors behind him and they were hitting a couple of gaps,” Bruce said. “I just thought in that moment he was the best guy to try and get us out of that. We continued to ride him and I’d do it again if I had to.”

Bruce stuck Gill in the third inning, but not for long. The senior lefty allowed back-to-back singles to Bryne and Jake Billings before Rodriguez came through with another RBI single to make it 8-0. That was finally it for Gill after 2 1/3 innings where he allowed seven earned runs on 10 hits with a pair of strikeouts.

“My approach was to just throw my best pitch every time and trust everything I’ve been doing all season,” Gill said. “Obviously, I didn’t get it done tonight.”

Tyson Robinson took over for Gill and allowed a sac fly to Martinez, which scored Billings, before escaping the inning.

Down 9-0, Suwannee avoided a shutout in the fourth when UCF commit Josh Fernald tripled and then scored on an RBI double from Waters. The Bulldogs could’ve had another run in the inning as Frier led off with a single only to get picked off by Martinez, a play that left Frier furious as he walked back to the dugout.

It appeared Martinez may have balked before picking Frier off.

The Bulldogs added another run in the fifth thanks to a leadoff single by Tyson Greene and a walk to Coby Campbell, which set up a two-out RBI infield single by Frier. But Frier ran himself out of the inning when Martinez caught him in a pickle between first and second base, stranding Campbell at third.

Suwannee never had another runner in scoring position.

“This is the second time coming back in the last few years and we’re going to be back again,” Bruce said of his team’s Final Four run. “This is a group that is going to fight and you can never count them out. The seniors have poured into the young guys and showed them the right way to do it and how to work hard and do it with integrity. The program is going to be strong because of them.”