By JAKE SHARFMAN

Special to The Oakland Press

NOVI — Tuesday afternoon’s Division 2 quarterfinal baseball game at Novi featured not one, but two of this years’ Cinderella stories.

Orchard Lake St. Mary’s entered the state tournament with a sub-par 12-19 record in the regular season, being the benefactor come playoff time of playing in the highly competitive Catholic Legaue Central Division, and showing it with great play in the regional tournament.

Birmingham Detroit Country Day won its first regional tournament since 1995 Saturday by pulling off an upset of monumental proportions, defeating highly-ranked and defending state champion Dearborn Divine Child after an average regular season of its own.

However, there was only one team that continues to wear the glass slipper after Tuesday afternoon.

And it comes in the form of an Eaglet.

Behind an explosive offense, fundamental defense and solid pitching, the Eaglets downed Country Day, 10-3, to head to the Divison 2 state semifinals in Battle Creek Friday afternoon for the second time in three years.

In 2007, the Eaglets made it to the state championship and were defeated by Mount Pleasant.

St. Mary’s will face Milan in the semifinals Friday afternoon.

“It’s always harder this time of the year because the farther you go, the harder it is to come home without the trophy,” St. Mary’s head coach Nick DiPonio said. “So I think we’ll enjoy this for the next 10 minutes or so and then get right back to business for this weekend.

“There are a good number of juniors on this team that were part of that 2007 team that lost in the finals and I think it still weighs on their minds.”

Two of those juniors DiPonio speaks about took it upon themselves to make sure that the Eaglets do in fact head back to Battle Creek this season.

Shortstop Theodore Piccirilli continued his red hot bat in the postseason.

Piccirilli was a triple away from the cycle Tuesday, going 3-for-3 with six RBI for the Eaglets.

In the first inning, with a runner on first, Piccirilli took a fastball and belted a two-run homer over the left field fence to put St. Mary’s ahead 3-0 before Country Day could record an out or even blink, really setting the tone early in the top of the first inning.

“(Piccirilli) has been there all year for us in many different roles and he really swung the bat again nicely today,” DiPonio said. “It seemed like he knew the strike zone well today and when he got his pitches he hit the ball real well.”

Piccirilli is slated to pitch the semifinal Friday for St. Mary’s.

The other hungry junior Tuesday afternoon was Devan Ahart, who started on the hill and pitched nicely to record the win, and also helped himself out at the plate.

Ahart hit RBI singles in both the first and second innings, followed by a bases-loaded RBI walk in the third inning to give himself a very comfortable lead to pitch with.

St. Mary’s took advantage of Yellowjacket errors in the second inning to score three more runs, followed by a third inning with four runs to really bust the game open on three key Country Day errors and an array of walks and hit batsmen.

Ahart pitched three scoreless innings for St. Mary’s to start the game, striking out four in the process. Ahart was able to get out of jams with key strikeouts when it mattered most.

In the bottom of the second inning, with the Eaglets already in front 6-0, Country Day had runners on second and third base with one out and its fourth and fifth hitters coming up.

After striking out the first batter, Ahart successfully cruised out of the jam with a weak fly out.

“I knew that if I just threw strikes, we would be alright,” Ahart said. “I also came in with a mentality of hitting the ball. If the (top of our line-up) gets on base, we know that we will hit them in.”

The Yellowjackets could have felt the effects of coming down off such an emotional high Saturday with its monumental upset in the regional finals.

Senior pitcher Mike Theodore threw too many pitches Saturday to start the game for Country Day, so outfielder Justin Collins had to start the game on the mound, followed by Jordan Pascasio.

Theodore did come into the game midway through the third inning for the Yellowjackets and successfully shut the Eaglets down the last 3 1/3 innings of the game striking out six, but by that point it too late for any sort of Country Day rally, even though they etched out a run in the fourth inning and two runs in the fifth.

“I’ve been around a long time and I told the kids before the game that sometimes a win can become too big,” Country Day head coach Frank Orlando said. “With the quarterfinals, you can say that we finished one of the top eight teams in Division 2, we weren’t even supposed to finish in the top 800. The only thing I can think of right now is that it was a heck of a good year for us.”