Picture by Cody Tomer Hiland second baseman Connor Beachy fields a grounder in the Beast of the East Championship Game on Sunday at Edison High School.

RICHMOND — The Hiland High School baseball team made a run to a regional final this past season.

With the seniors gone from that team, the up-and-coming squad showed what the future has in store on Sunday as it won three consecutive games and defeated Armory Baseball 6-0 in the 34th Annual Edgar Martin Beast of the East Classic 19U Championship at Edison High School.

“These kids were all on that team but our seniors aren’t here from that team so these guys are all next year’s guys,” Hiland coach Kevin Schrock said. “It was a grind. Braden (Kaufman) did a great job. He was behind the plate for us and caught all three games on Sunday and two of them were shutouts. It’s tough for the guys in the field to play 21 innings in one day but they are tough kids.”

How did the Hawks do it? Simple. Fundamental baseball.

Hiland had no errors in the final, used smart base-running to manufacture runs and pitcher Alec Weaver tossed a complete game shutout to help his teammates lift the trophy.

“We take a lot of pride in making plays behind our pitchers,” Schrock said. “We have a lot of speed in this lineup. We don’t have a ton of guys who are going to hit home runs but we have a lot of speed and we try to put pressure on the other team and try to win games that way.”

The title game was scoreless through four innings thanks to the strong pitching of Weaver and Armory’s Jake Pollaro.

Pollaro was firing his fastball past Hawk hitters early as he accounted for eight punchouts through four frames and finished with 10 Ks.

“This was as well as he’s thrown all season velocity-wise,” Armory coach Jay Cruze said. “He has brought it about 87 MPH before and (Sunday) he was around 85. We just had some errors and couldn’t put together any hits. Their pitcher had us off balance and shut us down.”

In the bottom of the fifth, however, Hiland busted through.

Caden Coblentz delivered a leadoff single and Connor Beachy bunted him to second.

Weaver helped his cause by blasting a shot off the left field wall for a double but Coblentz only advanced to third after making sure the ball wasn’t caught.

Colin Coblentz sent a chopper on the infield between Armory’s first and second baseman, leaving nobody to cover first and allowing the game’s first run to cross the dish.

Later in the frame, Nolan Yoder and Brady Yoder each garnered RBI groundouts to create a 3-0 cushion.

“We had to make a little adjustment there,” Schrock said. “We realized he was throwing nothing but fastballs that had some run to it so we worked hard to try to get on top of those balls and try to put pressure on the other team and they ended up kicking a couple around there and we were able to take advantage of it.”

Hiland added another three-run frame in the sixth as Colin Coblentz earned a bases-loaded RBI walk, Nolan Yoder sent a RBI sacrifice fly to center field and Cody Yoder added an infield RBI single to put the championship on ice.

Schrock and the Hawks not only secured the Beast crown but had fun in the process.

“It’s fun here,” Schrock said. “There is always a challenging field. It’s great competition for us, win or lose. That way we are not intimidated next spring when we see the best of the best.”