“I have a blast with them,” Lucas said.
Lucas and the Kings have plenty to celebrate this season. The Champion City Kings — members of the summer collegiate wooden bat Prospect League — won the franchise’s first-ever Ohio River Valley Division Championship, beating rival Chillicothe 10-9 on Aug. 5. The Kings fell one game shy of the Prospect League Championship Series, falling to the Lafayette Aviators 15-5 on Saturday.
The franchise came to Springfield in 2014 and Lucas has been coaching with the club since midway through the 2015 season. He’s also a member of the ownership group and threw out the first pitch for the team’s first-ever playoff game last week.
He hopes the playoff victory will mean even bigger things for the team in the future.
“It’s huge,” said Lucas, who played at Wright State University and as a minor leaguer in the Atlanta Braves organization. “I told the kids, in the winter time, I’ll see someone at the gas station and they’ll ask why we never make the playoffs. Now, we’ve got that monkey off our back. It’s all a credit to the kids. They’re the ones who did it. It’s a big deal for me.”
Kings catcher Bo Seccombe set the team’s single-season home run record in 2019 and returned to play in 2021 after finishing his college career at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala. He was happy to be a part of the Kings’ playoff run, especially for Lucas.
“I’ll tell you one thing — everybody in that dugout, there’s a special place in their heart for Marky Mark,” Seccombe said. “He means a lot to this team and he means a lot to us individually. He’s a good guy to be around and we’re really lucky to have him.”
Several Kings players set new records this season. Shawnee grad and Notre Dame College infielder Ben Ross set the team record for hits in a season with 80, leading the 16-team Prospect League. He finished the season with a .356 batting average with eight home runs and 19 stolen bases. He also set a Kings single season franchise record with 60 runs scored, also tops in the league.
As a freshman at Shawnee, Ross played with Seth Gray, a Minnesota Twins fourth-round pick who is currently playing for the High-A Cedar Rapids Kernels. Gray also played for the Kings in 2017.
“Growing up around here and watching guys I looked up to my whole life play here and move on, it’s just really cool to be a part of it,” Ross said.
Kings first baseman Lukas Galdoni of Butler University set new marks for RBIs (48), extra base hits (28) and walks (44). He also tied the record for doubles with 13.
He hit two home runs and a double on the last day of the regular season on Aug. 4 to seal the extra base hits record.
“I knew I was close and I had been making a push for it,” Galdoni said. “To get it on the last day of the season was awesome.”
The season was special for Springfield native Gage Voorhees, a Northwestern grad who plays at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla.
“I came to a lot of these games as a kid,” Voorhees said. “I had a lot of respect for these guys growing up and watching them play. I aspired to be at the level they were already at and that’s what kind of pushed me to get to this point in my life.”
Voorhees picked up the victory in the Kings first-ever playoff game, allowing three unearned runs on three hits with six strikeouts in six innings as Champion City erased a seven-run deficit to earn a thrilling 10-9 victory over Chillicothe to win the Ohio River Valley Division Championship.
He was happy the Springfield community and its longtime fanbase could share the victory with the team.
“It means a lot to us that they’re sharing this experience with us,”
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