LAKEWOOD >> In the high-stakes environment of Class 5A state tournament baseball, anything can make or break a team’s chances of advancing closer to the state title game. Broomfield learned that the hard way in its 6-4 loss to No. 6 Regis Jesuit on Friday afternoon.

In the bottom of the fifth inning of their consolation contest at Keli McGregor Field at Coca Cola All-Star Park, the fifth-seeded Eagles very nearly erased a 5-2 Raiders advantage, first off of a two-RBI double from senior center fielder Caden Williamson, and then during senior right fielder Tripp Bemis’ at-bat.

By the time Bemis stepped up to the plate, the Eagles had loaded the bases right back up with two outs down. He came tantalizingly close to sending one more runner home with a walk, but the first base umpire called his checked swing a strike on a full count.

Perhaps a controversial call, as many checked-swing calls are, it stunted the Eagles’ progress at just 5-4, and they couldn’t tap into any more offense from there on out.

Meanwhile, the Raiders added one last score on a Deion Cesario-Scott solo home run in the top of the sixth.

It was Bemis’ first full game back from a wrist injury that sidelined him for six weeks.

“It was a borderline call, but there’s not a kid that’s been in this program that I felt better about being up there than him,” head coach Kale Gilmore said. “He’s faced the most adversity probably of anybody on this team, and so for him to be in that spot was fitting.

“Baseball is a game of inches, they say, and we’ve played two games now at this field where the game could have gone either way, and we’re that close. Just like that at-bat, that’s the way this whole tournament’s gone.”

Broomfield ended its year with a 24-5 record and just two games shy of an appearance in the state championship game. The Raiders moved on to play top-seeded Grandview in the final consolation round later in the afternoon.

This band of Eagles began its run toward the state tournament long before they donned their jerseys for this spring season.

The 13 seniors on the roster started their high school ride during Gilmore’s first season atop the program, and that year, the upperclassmen won the championship with help from then-freshman Clayton Green.

They didn’t make it out of the first round in the two years that followed.

They began this season’s state tournament run with a 5-2 win over Fossil Ridge in the first round but quickly experienced the bitter taste of defeat with a 5-4 loss to Grandview in the second.The Eagles entered the final weekend of the competition with the best offensive numbers and the best collective ERA of the four teams remaining, the latter of which reached a final calculation of 2.18.

Williamson highlighted that energy, first with an error-ridden run in the bottom of the first, then with his pair of RBIs on his deep ball into right field in the fifth. He ended his swan song season with 40 RBIs, 37 hits, five home runs and six triples.

He earned his first varsity job as a sophomore and hasn’t looked back since. He said that he and his fellow seniors have been brimming with confidence from their freshman year on.

“We knew (this tournament run) was coming from the start. We thought we should have done it sophomore year. We thought we should have done it junior year, and especially senior year,” he said. “I think we had the most talent out here. I mean, it didn’t work out how it should have, but I think we had it. Everybody thought so on this team.”

Gilmore believes that while this group fell just short of achieving their ultimate goal, it laid an unbreakable foundation for future generations. And not just on the stat sheet.

“I look forward to going to baseball practice more than anything every single day, and it’s because of them,” Gilmore said. “They just take care of all the little things. Our seniors are the ones setting up the field. Our seniors are the ones breaking down the field. You have a catcher in Brendan Fritch who took a freshman under his wing and drove him everywhere all year long to make sure he was taken care of. They’re just tremendous human beings, and really good baseball players.

“For us, it’s all about the details. The way we practice, the way we act in the classroom, the way we conduct ourselves off the field, the way we take care of our field. We have a saying that if we don’t take care of the little things, then the big things will never come together, and they’ve always taken care of the little things, and that’s why they’re here. They’re prepared because they practice and they take care of the little things. That’s what Broomfield baseball is.”