St. Bede comes out hitting at BV’s expense

PERU - With a pair of 20-win teams looking to fine tune their games for postseason play next week, it looked like a good matchup on paper.

It wasn’t.

St. Bede (24-4) rapped out 15 hits, scoring in every inning en route to a 14-0 rout over former Three Rivers rival Bureau Valley (20-9) on the Academy diamond Wednesday.

St. Bede coach Bill Booker said he didn’t see a game like this in the cards.

“Not in my wildest dreams,” he said. “I think coach (BV’s Ryan Schisler) does a great job. He gets after it. His kids play hard for him. Today, things just clicked for us. There’s days like that in baseball.”

Hitting proved contagious for the Bruins. They had four hits in the first inning, seven in the second and two each in the third and fourth innings.

“We started off right off the first inning and built off it. Really just felt good today throughout the entire lineup,” said Bruins designated hitter Aidan Mullane, who went 2 for 3 with a double and four RBIs.

“It’s good to get going like this right before the regionals. Gives us good momentum going in,” said Bruins catcher Carson Riva, who had hits in all three at-bats and drove in four runs. “The energy in the dugout kind of sparks us, gets us going.”

The Bruins went right to work in the first inning, scoring three runs on four hits, including a RBI hit by Riva and a two-run single by Mullane.

St. Bede put up five runs on seven hits and two Storm throwing errors in second to go up 8-0. Gus Burr, Riva and Stuart McGunnigal had RBI singles and Mullane brought two more home with a double to left.

Riva collected his third RBI hit of the day with a two-run single in the third. Alan Spencer added a RBI groundout to make it 12-0.

Burr capped the Bruins’ scoring with a two-run double in the fourth.

Geno Dinges, Burr (three RBIs), Riva (four RBIs) each had three hits while Mullane had two hits with a double and four RBIs.

“That’s as well as we’ve hit the ball in a couple weeks. It looked like we are dialed into to hit and we needed that,“ Booker said.

Brock Rediger had the Storm’s only hit of the day with a single in the second inning.

Ranbir Saini (6-0) pitched three innings for the win, allowing one hit and one walk with one strikeout.

It was certainly not the kind of game Storm coach Ryan Schisler was looking for with the postseason approaching.

“We didn’t compete today,“ he said. ”I don’t know if it’s us getting psyched up for the Fighting Bruins, if it’s end of year stuff, seniors last dates. Can’t make excuses and we got to come back and compete on Friday, our next opportunity and be better.

“We didn’t play the way we’re capable of on D, didn’t have our approach at the plate and unfortunately you have days like this. And when you have days like this against a 22-4 team, the score reflects that. We didn’t answer the bell tonight and all we can do is hit the reset button tomorrow.”

BV will be hosting its own 2A regional as the No. 4 seed seed, opening with a semifinal game vs. No. 6 Orion on Thursday, May 22. St. Bede takes to the No. 1 seed to the 1A Stark County Regional, awaiting the winner between No. 6 Ridgewood and No. 9 Stark County on May 21.

After reaching the sectional finals a year ago, Mullane and Riva want a taste of more postseason success.

“We feel great. Feel like we can go pretty far this year. Maybe run it back. It’ll be fun,” Mullane said.

“Very confident going in on a win streak. The energy is very high right now. Feels good to go in on a high like this,” Riva said.

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St. Bede's Gus Burr hi-fives teammate Alan Spencer after scoring a run against Bureau Valley on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at St. Bede Academy. (Scott Anderson)