The Trojans were shut down by Aplington-Parkersburg pitcher Devin Davis in a 5-0 defeat at Schilling Field in Saturday’s Class 2A District 3 final.

West Marshall, the top-ranked team in Class 2A heading into the postseason, ends its season at 34-3. A-P advanced to a substate final with Roland-Story scheduled for Tuesday in Marshalltown.

“I thought we had prepared for the game, the guys felt confident, and…I don’t know,” West Marshall head coach Jerod Brown said. “A-P outplayed us in every way possible.”

Davis, a senior for the Falcons, struck out nine with two walks in a complete-game victory, scattering just two hits in 104 pitches.

T-R PHOTO BY JAKE RYDER - West Marshall’s Owen Siegert tracks down a fly ball near the fence during Saturday night’s district baseball final in State Center.

Entering Saturday with one of the best team batting averages in all of 2A, Davis held West Marshall to no hits through six innings before Beckham DeSotel ended the no-hit bid with a leadoff single in the seventh; AJ Dee added a double to put runners at 2nd-and-3rd with no outs but a strikeout and two flyouts ended the game.

“[Davis] threw a ton of strikes,” Brown said. “And for whatever reason, we just swung and missed at a lot of fast balls. He had some good breaking balls at times, but we just weren’t very competitive at the plate, and missing those fastballs was probably the biggest thing.”

Aplington-Parkersburg hounded West Marshall right away in the first inning, loading the bases with no outs after two hit batsmen and an infield single from Tate Neymeyer. The Falcons only walked away with one run in that inning but added a second on an RBI groundout in the second frame.

The third inning was perhaps West Marshall’s best opportunity to put pressure on A-P; Caden Pfantz and Owen Siegert reached on walks and moved to second and third after a balk with two outs but a flyout ended the threat.

The Falcons immediately made the Trojans pay in the fourth inning, with a two-RBI hit for Neymeyer and an RBI triple for Sully Janssen that created a daunting 5-0 deficit for a West Marshall team that was hitless at the time.

“They were really tough outs and we played well defensively to get out of there only allowing five runs,” Brown said. “They consistently threatened us, even when they didn’t score in the last few innings, those were some hard outs. They barreled up and hit balls hard.”

A-P had lost a 6-0 lead to West Marshall in last year’s district final, however, so head coach Brett Kleespies and the Falcons weren’t going to get ahead of themselves with this 5-0 lead.

“We were getting close with the pitch count there at the end after giving up a couple hits — it’s one of those things where you just have to hold your breath,” Kleespies said. “West Marshall’s a heck of a ballclub. … That was the best I’ve seen Devin pitch in all five years that we’ve had him — he was locked in.”

With Trojan ace Owen Siegert unavailable to pitch after maxing out his alloted pitch count against Hudson earlier in the week, West Marshall went to Grayson Shaver, Noah DeSotel and Beckham DeSotel to cobble together a solid enough core to keep the Trojans competitive.

Shaver was cleared to return to action by Thursday, Brown said, after having some knee pains at the end of Tuesday’s district semifinal with Hudson.

“Those guys weren’t the sharpest at times, but the consistently competed in spots even when they knew they didn’t have their best stuff,” Brown said. “We got ourselves in some tricky spots where we stayed composed overall.

“A-P was just a lot better than we were tonight.”

The end result is a season where West Marshall easily cleared a school record for wins in a season but fell well short of a state tournament berth for a club that were heavy favorites to contend for a 2A title.

It was all a little too fresh for Brown to really process in the moment.

“Everyone’s gonna focus on that last loss,” Brown said. “But I think it’d be foolish to look at this game as the only determining factor for success this season. This group was really tight not just as players but as people as well, and I’m proud at how they improved every single day, putting in the work for six, seven months now.”

Saturday was the final game for seniors Dylan Thompson, Owen Siegert, Andrew Tollefson and Grayson Shaver.

“That’s a really special group,” Brown said. “They were the driving force in those early months when the motivation is harder to have, and the joy they came in with every day is probably the biggest thing I’ll take away from them. They’ve set a legacy with this school record and will leave an impact others in this program.

“If you went and asked these younger guys, man by man, if they’re a better person because they were around those seniors, they’d say yes, and it’s not because they taught them a curveball grip or something, it’s who those seniors are as people.”