Peetz baseball earns No. 13 seed in Class 1A regional bracket
Peetz opens regionals at Simla, one win from a second game and two wins from Lakewood after a 9-9 regular season.
A No. 13 seed sends Peetz baseball to Simla for a first-round regional game Saturday, and the Bulldogs now need to turn a rugged spring into a short postseason run if they want a trip to Lakewood. CHSAA’s bracket puts the first two rounds at the highest seed in each regional, with the final four advancing to the Class 1A state tournament at All-Star Park on May 14. Peetz already saw Simla once, falling 9-4 on March 20, so the opener brings both a familiar opponent and a direct path to keep playing.
The seed reflects a team that lived through the ups and downs of a demanding schedule. MaxPreps listed Peetz at 9-9 overall and 5-1 in 1A District 5, with 144 runs scored and 129 allowed, a margin that suggests a club that could score but also had to grind through close games and tough nights. The Bulldogs also posted eye-catching results along the way, including a 22-2 win over Weldon Valley that featured a 19-run fifth inning and extended their winning streak against the Warriors to eight straight games.
The stretch that best explains why Peetz is a dangerous 13 seed came late in the regular season. The Bulldogs won three straight at one point, capped by a 12-1 rout of Sedgwick County on April 18, when Conner Schumacher struck out seven batters in 3.1 innings, Rhyder Bayne went 3-for-3 with two doubles and a stolen base, and Logan Vallier drove in four runs, a career high on MaxPreps. Schumacher entered the postseason as Peetz’s batting leader at .562 and also led the team with four home runs, while Bayne’s .638 on-base percentage showed how often the Bulldogs’ table-setter reached base.
The bracket also fits Peetz’s history. A Journal-Advocate recap in 2014 noted that the Bulldogs were making their second straight trip to the Class 1A Regional/State Tournament even after finishing 4-8, and a 2018 preview said the team returned most of a group that had gone 9-7 the year before, including a 7-3 league mark. That is the backdrop for this group now: a small-school program that has treated regional baseball as a benchmark, not an entitlement, and has again earned a shot to prove a hard schedule was preparation rather than punishment.
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