From the spacious college ballpark to the quality of play on the field, it was easy to forget this was a high school baseball game being played on a sunny Saturday afternoon at Hoglund Ballpark.

It had everything a ballgame needs to qualify as an instant classic. It had a pitcher’s duel so intense that an extra inning was required to push a runner across the plate. It had big hitters coming up in big spots. It had a play at the plate on a laser-beam of a throw from the outfield. It had outfielders tracking flyballs beautifully and infielders refusing to let grounders eat them up.

Free State was eliminated from state-title contention, but it didn’t lose the game as much as Maize High won it by the classic baseball score, 1-0, in eight innings.

A sign the crowd was in for one special afternoon of baseball entertainment came when the first threat to break the scoreless tie ended in dramatic fashion. Trying to score from second on teammate Joshua Kinney’s single to right, Jeffery Sturgeon appeared as if he would arrive ahead of the throw. But right fielder Cody Kukuk threw a line drive to catcher Adam Petz, who needed to be quick without hurrying into a mistake. Petz got the tag down in the nick of time, the home-plate umpire punched the out sign, and a number of people shaking their heads must have been asking themselves, “Was that throw really made by a high school player?” It was, and a junior at that.

And were both the right-handed starting pitchers, mixing off-speed pitches and precisely locating fastballs with such savvy — Dillon Kerans of Maize and Colin Toalson — really just high school pitchers? They both looked so comfortable, so calm, so experienced in such a big game.

A magnificent shortstop when he’s not on the mound, Toalson returns next season, along with Kukuk, making Free State a state-title contender before it plays a game.

Toalson didn’t need his defense to help him out of a jam in the fourth, when his shutout bid withstood a serious threat, after Maize’s No. 9 hitter, Thomas Clay, executed a beautiful hit-and-run, stroking one through the hole in the right side of the infield created when the second baseman went to cover the bag. Strikeout. Popup to second. Runners stranded on the corners. Scoreless tie preserved.

The next inning, with Free State’s defense on the field, the question, “Was that really a high school outfielder?” surfaced again in the brain. Firebirds senior center fielder Connor Stremel went back on Ross Cunningham’s flyball to the track so swiftly and gracefully, getting under it for the second out of the inning. Stremel, who is headed to Baker University, where he plans to play football in the fall, looked big-time again on the game’s final play in the bottom of the eighth.

When Maize’s Troy Bell powered a flyball deep to center, everybody in the ballpark knew the game was over, but that didn’t keep Stremel from executing a perfect play in an attempt to gun down the runner from third. Stremel went back quickly and got far enough behind the ball so that he could step into the throw and give it all he had. Great throw. It symbolized how far Free State pushed its season, right to the brink of a title.