American Heritage Sweeps Its Way Back to State Final Four

The champs are back!

With a 9-6 victory over the Somerset Academy Panthers on Saturday, the American Heritage Patriots completed the series sweep to win the Class 4A-4 regional championship. The 2025 Class 4A state champions have now punched their ticket back to Fort Myers, with the chance to defend their title while chasing after their fifth state championship in program history.

Heritage has also never won back-to-back state championships before.

American Heritage (21-9) joins an impressive group of defending champions that have earned a trip back to states this year. Holmes County (Rural), Miami Springs (3A), Mater Academy (5A), St. Thomas Aquinas (6A) and Douglas (7A) all also won their regional championships to defend their crowns. The other two champs from a season ago both fell in game threes on Saturday, coming just short of an unprecedented return of every defending champion.

Following a decisive 9-0 shutout on Friday, Heritage came out firing by scoring three runs in the top of the first inning of the elimination contest. Junior first baseman Angelo Geraldo slugged a three-run home run to put his club in the driver’s seat, only to watch that lead trimmed to 3-2 after the Panthers answered back with two runs in the bottom of the inning.

Ryan Marichal drove in Alan Sanchez and Brady Mongera scored on an error to get right back in the game.

Somerset (17-14) evened things back up an inning later when Brayden Ordonez scored off a sac-fly RBI from Jay Martinez.

But Gerardo was back at it again, as he continued his monster day with an RBI double that plated Marc Ascensio to go back ahead 4-3 in the third. Gerardo than added another long ball with a solo home run that extended the lead in the top of the sixth. Joseph Newberg later scored on an RBI ground out from Davin Petrucci, and Anthony Lyman put the game out of reach with a two-RBI double in the seventh that made it a 9-3 advantage.

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