INDIANAPOLIS – The IHSAA announced pairings Sunday night for the upcoming high school baseball state tournament.
The 52nd annual tournament begins May 23 at 64 sites around the state and will feature a total of 387 teams in the four classes.
Sectional winners will advance to four-team regionals on June 2, and the 16 regional champions will play in a one-game semistate on June 9.
The state championship games are scheduled for June 15-16 at Victory Field in Indianapolis.
Of the six baseball teams in the Times-Union coverage area, only one enters the 2018 state tournament as the defending sectional champion.
The Whitko Wildcats, currently 2-12 under first-year head coach Mark Fisher, won Class 2A Sectional 37 a year ago at Wabash High School with Erik Hisner at the helm. It was the program’s first sectional title.
The Wildcats will open defense of their sectional crown by playing the host Apaches in a six-team field. Cass will play Oak Hill in the opener, with first-round winners to meet in a semifinal. Rochester and Manchester drew first-round byes and will face each other in the semifinals.
In Class 4A Sectional 4 at Penn High School, the Warsaw Tigers drew the host and defending champion Kingsmen, who fell 4-3 to Indianapolis Cathedral in last year’s state finals.
Other first-round matchups at Penn include Concord and Northridge, and Goshen and Elkhart Central. Elkhart Memorial will play the Concord/Northridge winner.
Tippecanoe Valley and Wawasee are among the seven teams in Class 3A Sectional 21 at Lakeland High School.
First-round matchups include NorthWood and Angola, West Noble and Lakeland, and Wawasee and Fairfield.
Valley drew a bye and will face the winner of NorthWood and Angola.
In a seven-team Class 1A sectional hosted by South Bend Career Academy, Triton will play a first-round game against Oregon-Davis.
Other first-round matchups include Culver Community and Argos, and South Central and the host team.
