Staff photo / Preston Byers. Canfield’s Zain Jadallah (left) and Dylan Mancini embrace after the Cardinals’ Division IV regional final loss to Mentor Lake Catholic on Thursday in Canton.

CANTON — In a muggy, lightning-delayed Division IV regional championship game, Canfield’s season came to an end with a six-inning 10-0 loss to Mentor Lake Catholic at Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium in Canton on Thursday.

Unlike Tuesday’s semifinal, in which the Cardinals jumped on Hubbard early and hung 10 runs on the Eagles, Canfield’s bats never heated up against the Cougars.

“Definitely not our best effort,” Canfield head coach Matt Weymer said. “You gotta really tip your hat to Lake Catholic. The pitcher did a great job keeping us off balance, and our offense has been really humming for a while, and it did not hum today. And pitching has a lot to do with that. He did a good job keeping us off the bases, and we just couldn’t get anything going. And then same thing on the flip side, they put pressure on us from start to finish.”

Thursday’s game got an auspicious start; 15 minutes before the 2 p.m. first pitch, lightning was spotted in the area, causing the game’s start to be pushed back as a result of a mandatory 30-minute delay.

About 25 minutes after the scheduled start, Lake Catholic pitcher Shea Sievers took the mound and began what would become a dominant outing.

On the day, Sievers allowed just three hits and two walks while striking out five batters.

Conversely, Canfield’s trio of pitchers struggled with a Cougars batting order seemingly itching to hit after being bottled up by Girard’s Dom Tolone on Tuesday. The three Cardinals who took the mound — starter Ryan Weibling and relievers Joey Gabriel and Zain Jadallah — surrendered a combined 11 hits and 10 walks and threw more than 150 pitches over 5.2 innings pitched, nearly double Sievers in six full innings.

“They just did a really good job of grinding us out and [putting] a lot of stress on our pitchers,” Weymer said.

The trouble nearly began in the bottom of the first when AJ Trobentor singled and Brayden Mann drew a two-out walk. Weibling managed to escape the inning, though, when Micah Nyetrae grounded into a double play.

Things didn’t work out as well in the second inning, during which the Cougars started off with back-to-back hits, putting two runners in scoring position without any outs. Three batters later, after a walk to load the bases, Pete Malchesky drove in the first run of the game with a sacrifice fly to right field.

Weibling managed to grind through the third inning, allowing a double and a walk in the process, but he proved not long for the fourth. After Sean Walsh singled up the middle to lead off the half-inning, Weymer made a change on the mound, relieving Weibling for Gabriel.

The move ultimately did not pay off; after a sacrifice bunt, Caden Boyes singled and Irobentor was intentionally walked to load the bases with one down. Mann seized on the opportunity, singling right to drive in a pair of runs and extend Lake Catholic’s lead to three.

Two batters later, Patrick Radigan similarly singled to bring home another two runners.

Despite a David Murphy single to lead off the fifth inning, the Cardinals did not mount any more of a response, as each of the subsequent three batters flew out. Murphy’s hit would be the last for Canfield.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Cougars appeared to smell blood and went in for the kill.

Trobentor led off the half-inning with a single before Mann drew a walk, which prompted Weymer to make another pitching change, bringing in Jadallah for Gabriel.

Nyetrae, the first batter Jadallah faced, crushed a pitch to deep center field, driving in both runners with a triple. Radigan then doubled down the left-field line to score Nyetrae.

Minutes later, lightning flashed overhead at Munson Stadium, causing the second delay of the day. Loud thunder and heavy rain soon followed, confining players and coaches to their respective dugouts for the next hour.

Just over 60 minutes after the game was halted, Jadallah took the mound again to try to get the final two outs of the sixth inning. Unfortunately for the senior, he struggled with his control following the delay.

Jadallah walked three consecutive batters, the final of which resulted in the Cougars’ ninth run, before Boyes hit a sacrifice fly to center field to drive in Josh Howman to trigger the OHSAA’s 10-run mercy rule and clinch Lake Catholic’s regional title.

“Today, they played it better than us,” Weymer said. “If people have watched us play in the last month, I think that it’s very easy to say that we just did not play a very good baseball game today. It doesn’t take away from the last month, it doesn’t take away from everything that the kids accomplished this year. It’s just that on this stage, there’s only four teams that are going to play in the state final four. You want to be one of those teams, [but] you have to play your best game every game. We did a great job with that for five tournament games. Today, we didn’t do our best. And when you don’t do your best, the ride’s supposed to end.”

With Thursday’s loss, the Cardinals finished the 2025 season with a 21-11 record, having won their first district title in four years and reaching the regional final for the first time since 2018.

Weymer, who was in his first season as Canfield’s head coach, hopes that this season is a sign of things to come for a historically strong program.

“I think for a long time, Canfield baseball has been told that we were going to do great things, and then when it came time to do those great things, we didn’t do them. And I think that kind of became a reputation for us a little bit,” Weymer said. “I think this team was told that they couldn’t do those things, and then they went out and did them. And so now, hopefully that becomes the reputation, the expectation that it doesn’t matter what the season looks like, or who’s coming back or who’s leaving. The expectation is that we will do these things, not because people tell us that we’re good, but because we’ll work hard enough to get there every year.”