On Friday, May 19^th, McLean traveled across town to Langley High School to face the Stone Bridge Bulldogs in the Semi-Finals of the Liberty District Tournament. Stone Bridge had defeated Marshall just two days ago to earn the date with the Highlanders, who had received a bye into the game by virtue of finishing the regular season in second place.

The game figured to be close as both teams had taken turns winning one run games at home in the regular season series. Danny Bell started on the mound for McLean and Chris Dzurilla took the hill for Stone Bridge. Neither team was able to push a run across in the first inning, but some costly mistakes by the Highlanders allowed Stone Bridge to blow the game open with a six run second. Stone Bridge had a 6-0 lead with a second team All-District pitcher on the mound in Dzurilla.

Despite the huge deficit, the Highlanders refused to quit, and by the bottom of the fourth inning had tied the game at 6-6. Frankie Cavanaugh spearheaded the comeback with a two out, bases loaded double to left-center field that cleared the bases and knotted the score. "There’s no doubt we really shot ourselves in the foot to get down 6-0", McLean Head Coach John Thomas said. "However, instead of throwing in the towel, our kids really came together and dug down deep. That is exactly what we expect them to do. We don’t want our kids to hang their heads and we certainly don’t tolerate quitting. It was great to see the effort that our players continued to put forth after the second inning. They fought very, very hard to get back into the game."

Despite the Highlanders’ valiant collective effort, Stone Bridge was able to scrape two more runs in the top half of the seventh inning on only one hit to stake an 8-6 lead. McLean hit the ball hard twice in the bottom half of the inning, but went down in order. Stone Bridge escaped with a hard-fought 8-6 victory.

"You have to give Stone Bridge a lot of credit", Coach Thomas said. "First of all, Dzurilla showed a lot of heart tonight by going the distance, even after we knocked him around a bit in the middle innings. That was a gutsy performance. Secondly, they found a way to score a couple of runs off of Mills, and not many teams have been able to do that. I thought that Shane threw the ball well tonight, but their kids just got it done. They played well and they deserved to win."

The loss brought McLean’s overall record to 15-6 on the season. The Highlanders will now travel to Lake Braddock High School on Friday, May 26^th, to take on the Bruins of LBHS at 7:00PM. "We are ready to put the loss to Stone Bridge behind us and focus our efforts entirely on Lake Braddock", Coach Thomas said. "It’s a great opportunity for our kids and our program to be matched up with a great program like Lake Braddock in the first round of the Northern Region Tournament. They certainly have one of the top programs in the region, if not the state. It will certainly be a great atmosphere for high school baseball, and a heck of a challenge for us. We are very excited for this opportunity, and we will come to play."