The Challengers end the 2024 season with two wins against the Wil Prates. With the sweep the C’s finish in third place with an ultimately positive record of eight wins and seven losses.
The Zurich lineup revealed that the last gameday of the 2024 season was already a preparation for the 2025 season. No fewer than six U20 players were used and the young talents did a good job. The Challengers set the pace from the start. The Eastern Swiss were able to keep up until the sixth inning, but then the Zurich team made the decisive difference with five runs. James Sanders opened the scoring with an RBI single, Carsten Zuber and Säntis Zeller each scored on a wild pitch from the Pirates pitcher before Jordi Bucher made it 9-3 with a 2-run single. The last run for the final score of 11-4 was symbolic for the game with one of the youngest lineups in club history. Noam Blickenstorfer brought Niilo Benz home with an RBI single.
Säntis Zeller also made history. The eternally young middle infielder insisted on working on his personal bucket list. He is now the first Challengers player since Werner Zingg to play in every field position for an inning in a game. Ryan Byrne delivered the numbers for the game with five hits and four runs, while Simon Steffen was awarded the win for four innings as a relief pitcher, in which he gave up three hits and one run with five strikeouts.
The second game of the day went very similarly. The last game of the season was also tied for a long time before starting pitcher Carsten practically organized the win himself with an RBI double in the top half of the fifth inning to take a 2-1 lead. The Pirates were no longer able to make up the deficit. Quite the opposite. Thanks to two errors by the Pirates, Simon Steffen scored in the sixth inning to make it 3-1 and Jordi Bucher brought Jasper Freigang home with a bunt single to make it 4-1, before Regis Reinhard made it 5-2 with an RBI single in the seventh inning and then made the save with the last three outs to bring the Challengers season to a close.
Meanwhile, the Therwil Flyers secured their 16th Swiss championship title with a sweep in the best-of-five final series against the Zurich Barracudas.
