Moniteau baseball, led by ace Dawson Cook, beats Redbank Valley in District 9 championship
DUBOIS — Everything about Monday’s District 9 Class 2A baseball championship was flipped on its head.
The rowdy chanting from Moniteau’s dugout while their pitcher is on the mound. Redbank Valley suffering a loss on the stage. The outcome with Dawson Cook on the mound.
Led by “Captain Cook,” the No. 2 Warriors ended the top-seeded Bulldogs’ dynasty — or at least interrupted it — with an electric 1-0 win Monday afternoon at DuBois’ Showers Field. They claimed their first district title since 2019 and will appear in the PIAA tournament for just the fifth time.
Cook “shoved,” as he said, dealing for seven shutout innings while striking out 10. It capped an unbelievable three-game playoff stretch in which he threw 17 of 21 innings and allowed just three runs and struck out 27 against Smethport, Curwensville and Redbank.
“Before the season (Dawson) was like, ‘I’m gonna throw until my arm goes out,’” his brother and battery mate, Weston Cook, said. “And we were like, ‘We trust you.’ We threw him on our backs. … He gave it all to us.”
“Unbelievable,” first-year Moniteau coach Garrick Lapusnak said. “Man, he was dead on today. Dead on.”
And it reversed the bitter outcome of the 2024 title game, in which Dawson Cook, then a sophomore, threw 6.2 innings of relief but gave up the walk-off hit in the ninth for the Bulldogs’ second of three straight titles.
Moniteau (14-8) has a legion of traffic cones — “who would’ve thought that anybody’d be mimicking the Pittsburgh Pirates nowadays,” Lapusnak said — in the dugout and shouts “Captain Cook” on repeat whenever their ace is pitching.
Like their captain, who emphatically celebrates nearly every out, the Warriors are demonstrative and hard to ignore. Old-school baseball fans need not watch.
But for this team, it works.
“It’s awesome,” said Cook, who wanted to prove to Redbank (15-5) he was the better pitcher than their aces, Braylon Wagner and Jaxon Huffman, and his team was the better team. “The other team even feeds into it, they get a little mad, it gets into their head.”
Whether Moniteau was in the Bulldogs’ heads or not, they certainly had their number.
The game was billed as a pitchers’ duel and played out that way. RV started Wagner, who was excellent over six innings, allowing just five hits while punching out four. Huffman pitched a scoreless seventh. Both entered the game with sub-2.00 ERAs and a combined 130 strikeouts.
Cook was equally dominant — he’d argue better — all season, with a 1.43 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 58.2 innings entering the final.
From the jump, both starters were dealing. But Cook was just a bit better.
He was only seriously threatened twice — in the bottom of the first when he gave up a two-out double to Wagner, and in the fourth when he allowed two runners on with two outs before getting out of the jam with a K.
Redbank’s last best chance came in the sixth, but Cook fanned Carson Gould, allowed a base runner on an error then proceeded to force Wagner and Brock George — who scored that winning run in the 2024 title game — into ground outs. Cook held the 2-5 hitters to a 3-for-12 line and struck them out four times.
He said after his fastball was “living,” and he and Weston Cook were pleased by his mix of sliders and curveballs that induced a bunch of awkward swings-and-misses.
“He was so focused and locked in,” Lapusnak said. “I was keeping track of the velocity on his pitches. He wasn’t losing any velocity, didn’t appear to be getting tired, so we were going through with him until the end.”
Moniteau broke a scoreless tie in the top of the fourth. Cook, who went 2-for-3 at the plate, poked a single to right field with two outs, then Weston Cook doubled to the opposite field in left-center to drive Dawson Cook home. The fly ball carried farther than RV centerfielder Isaac Neiswonger expected and rolled to the deepest part of the park, nearly 360 feet to the wall.
Dawson Cook scored easily.
“I was looking for a fastball, maybe outside, hopefully I can push it the other way and put Dawson in scoring position, maybe my team can put him in,” Weston Cook said.
Added Lapusnak: “Great hit, great piece, left-center in the gap. Awesome, awesome work by Weston.”
The Warriors now have a week off before the start of the PIAA Class 2A tournament Monday against the District 4 champion. Lapusnak said he heard they will host the first-round game at Slippery Rock University. Southern Columbia and South Williamsport play 4:30 p.m. Tuesday for the D4 title.
