DECATUR — After five straight regional appearances and five empty-handed bus rides home to Nappanee, it took just four and a half innings for NorthWood baseball to finally break through opposite Yorktown at the Bellmont Regional Saturday night.

The Panthers advanced through the afternoon game with a 7-5 victory over Fort Wayne Concordia, then made short work of Yorktown — which advanced 3-2 versus Norwell in the Bellmont tournament-opener — shutting down the Tigers 10-0 in a runs-head-rule win for the program’s first championship since 1983.

So was it worth the wait? Well, Saturday’s championship was certainly sweet.

“It’s such a refreshing feeling, and it just feels like there’s so much weight lifted off our shoulders because we get here often,” said NorthWood manager Jay Sheets. “It’s just one of those things where you’re thinking ‘Is it something with this place?’ And finally, they got it done.”

“We’ve had great teams in the past four years that I’ve been in high school, and we’ve been getting to the regional championship and just couldn’t get over that hump and finally tonight,” said grinning senior Vincent Hershberger.

“It means so much for me and for the community finally getting that regional championship and getting on to semistate.”

If the Panthers were eager to put this one away early, it was understandable.

In last year’s regional title match, NorthWood jumped on Delta early but left the door open for an eventual 8-7 heartbreaker. Sheets was determined not to let his players forget that last go-round, and they weren’t taking any chances Saturday.

It took NorthWood two innings to get on the board, but once they started rolling, the Panthers never stopped.

Jaron Mullet scored his team’s first run in the second when he singled, Drake Gongwer moved him to third with a double to the right field fence, and Travis Stephenson poked a single through the right side of the infield to score Mullet. The home team on the scoreboard plated three runs on three hits and a wild pitch in the third, then scratched out another six off three hits and three walks in the fourth.

“You’ve got to learn from your past. I don’t like living in the past, but I like learning from the past,” said Sheets of last year’s regional heartbreak. “I told them we had to keep the bus moving the whole time. When we got up early, I said ‘We’ve got to keep it going. We’ve got to keep the gas pedal down.’”

All told, NorthWood’s lineup collected 11 hits — including three doubles — against a beleaguered Yorktown pitching staff of four. Clean-up hitter Hershberger was personally responsible for two of those two-baggers, and the three-year Panthers starter finished the night with three RBIs and two runs scored.

But the Panthers were productive throughout the order.

Brant Mast and Drew Minnich scored two runs apiece alongside Hershberger, while Mullett, Matt Dutkowski, Hunter Warren and Stephenson all scored runs as well, and Dutkowski drove in two runs.

“Hitting is contagious; it’s so contagious in baseball,” said Hershberger. “Once one person got a hit, it just kept piling on and piling on and piling on, and we went from one, three to six runs in an inning. The contagiousness from hitting just traveled throughout our lineup, and everybody produced, top to bottom. There were no holes in our lineup tonight in this last game.”

Vincent Hershberger and Hunter Warren celebrate Hershberger’s run in the third inning Saturday.

Winners of 26 straight, NorthWood has only recently gotten hot at the plate, but it’s certainly picked the right time to do so. The Panthers have scored a prolific 42 runs since beginning their postseason run with an 11-4 win over Wawasee on May 27.

“I just think it’s a focused mentality. Our bats have been kind of quiet all year long, and that’s one thing I’ve noticed and said to a lot of people but they’re getting hot at the right time, which is what we wanted,” said Sheets.

While his team gave him plenty of run support at the plate, sophomore Alec Holcomb pitched like a veteran on the hill. Backed by a one-error NorthWood defense, Holcomb surrendered just one walk while delivering a two-hit gem attacking the strike zone for the Panthers.

“I went person by person just getting first-pitch strikes and trying to get first outs,” said Holcomb. “Get the first batter out and then run right along from there.”

Alec Holcomb reaches back to deliver a pitch.

Holcomb worked his way out of a bases-loaded jam with one out in the third when he got Cole Barr to ground to third, and Hershberger gunned down Sully Swingley at the plate, then induced a pop-up by Carter Durham to Stephenson at short to end the threat.

That top half of the third proved a pivotal moment in the game as Yorktown never got a runner in scoring position again, and the Panthers plated three runs in the bottom half of the inning to extend their lead to four runs.

“That to me was probably going to be their big push inning, and I thought they were going to have one more inning left in them when they got the top of the order back up in the fifth,” explained Sheets of the third. “I kept telling our guys ‘They’re going to have one more push,’ and from there on out we kind of shut them down the rest of the game.”

Down to one out with a runner on first, Tigers number one hitter Jordan Coleman fouled off five pitches during a 10-pitch at bat in the fifth, but Holcomb stayed patient and kept attacking. Stephenson made a diving grab of a chopper into the gap behind second, then flipped a ball to Mast at second from his back in a spectacular final out that put an exclamation point on the win. The victors swarmed Holcomb in a pig pile on the mound as the normally-stoic Panthers enjoyed a moment five years in the making.

“It was great after that long at bat. I just knew to keep throwing strikes, keep throwing strikes and sooner or later he was going to get a ground ball, a pop fly or even get a hit, and I was going to get the next batter. It was a great play,” said Holcomb of the last out.

Travis Stephenson makes a spectacular assist for the final out.

NorthWood now advances to the Plymouth Semistate against South Bend St. Joseph — a 9-7 winner over John Glenn in the Griffith Regional championship Saturday — next Saturday. Jasper plays Northview at the Jasper Semistate in the southern half of the bracket, and the winners will advance to the 3A state final at Victory Field in Indianapolis  June 17.

“In my honest opinion I don’t see why our team can’t go all the way. I don’t think there’s a better team that’s more deserving, and I think we’ve got all the tools that we need to do it: We can hit, we can field, and we can pitch,” said Sheets.

“I like where we’re going, and we don’t want this train to stop anytime soon.”

NorthWood’s baseball team shows off its regional hardware.