
The St. Joseph Jaguars high school baseball season was one of contrasts, coin flips and various degrees of celebration.
First came the rain, postponing all six regular season games, a playoff tournament, and eventually an 11th-hour coin flip to determine the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association champion and OFSAA regional qualifier.
But once the Jaguars hit the regionals, they stormed through their historic run in the OFSAA playoffs, which ended Wednesday with a silver medal in London.
St. Joseph, the second seed in the Final Four and the first NCSSAA school to reach the final, dropped the gold-medal game 3-2 to St. Anne of Windsor.
“The boys are fine now, but a bit disappointed,” Jaguars’ manager Rene Coutu said. “In time, they will understand what they accomplished. They were amazing. I’m more than proud of them. They worked so hard.”

The Jaguars reached the final with a 6-3 semifinal victory over Riverside of Windsor as Josh Cullen hit a game-winning, three-run homer in the seventh inning.
Given Ottawa’s wet spring, the Jaguars probably never thought they’d play a game this season let alone reach the OFSSA final.
But on May 23, the weather co-operated, the NCSSAA staged a nine-team, three-pool playoff tournament and St. Joseph, John McCrae and Sacred Heart posted 2-0 records. Two attempts to play the round-robin, championship final were doused by more rain.
After the second postponement, time had run out. The OFSAA East Region final started the next day in Toronto and the NCSSAA needed a rep. Using its tiebreaking formula, the NCSSAA settled the issue using its seventh and final option — a coin flip by the managers.
The coin that wasn’t like the other two would make that school the champion. On the third round, St. Joseph recorded tails against two heads and qualified for the OFSAA East Region tournament.
St. Joseph was on top of its game at regionals, winning five of six games and advanced to the Final Four.