The Putnam County baseball team did not walk off Illinois Field in Champaign the way it had hoped to on Saturday.

But the Panthers still walked off with pride, with a large contingent of family, friends and fans cheering them on following their 10-0, five-inning loss to Tremont in the Class 1A state championship game.

“It’s a little surreal,” Putnam County coach Chris Newsome said. “I mean, you can’t have any disappointment at this level because it’s incredible to be here. There’s a lot of pride going through my head right now and encouragement. This sets the stage and filters down to the youth who were here. It really helps drive throughout our community. You’ve seen it throughout the last couple days down here. The backing is unreal by these folks and the entire community is unreal.

“It’s been a blessing, but ultimately, it comes back to the boys and how proud I am and how much I love those guys.”

The Panthers matched the best finish in program history and brought home the school’s fourth state trophy.

“It’s great to do it with these guys,” Putnam County senior Johnathon Stunkel said. “There’s no one better. It’s like a brotherhood around here. We worked hard for this. We didn’t get the job done today, but we went as far as we could and gave it everything we had.”

Tremont (39-2) took control from the start Saturday.

Putnam County’s Traxton Mattingly drew a walk from Tremont starter Chase Rhodes to lead off then stole second, but the Panthers couldn’t move him any further.

In the bottom half of the first inning, Tremont’s Griffin Meeker ripped a triple to deep center field to start things off. The Turks got three more hits and benefited from an error to score three runs in the first.

After another scoreless frame for Putnam County in the second, the Turks scored two runs and had the bases loaded with one out when thunder and lightning caused a delay.

“Tremont is probably the best team we’ve played all year,” Mattingly said. “I give Chase a lot of credit. I played with him back in 15U. He throws hard. He throws well. The whole team can just hit it really well.”

The 57-minute delay did not provide a spark for the Panthers like it famously did for the 2016 Chicago Cubs in Game 7 of the World Series.

“We went with an opener (on the mound) with Maddox (Poole) to hopefully go soft because we knew they were pretty talented,” Newsome said. “We were hoping to get some more ground balls and lazy pop ups, but that wasn’t the case. Obviously, they were putting some good barrels on it. Then we go to Kade (Zimmerlein) and they continued to put barrels on it.

“We had the rain delay. I joked with the guys, ‘Who’s our Jason Heyward.’ Then I realized some of those kids were like 6 years old when that happened and were probably in bed. I think the reset gave us an opportunity, but they’re just super talented and you just have to tip your hat when you’re beat. They had more talent than we did. They executed better, but that doesn’t take anything away from our guys.”

After the delay, Tremont scored three more runs in the second and two in the third to build a 10-0 lead.

The Panthers, meanwhile, finished with just two hits. Carter Hochstatter hit a slow chopper for a single in the second and Zimmerlein lined a single into center in the fourth.

“We knew they were going to be good,” Stunkel said. “There were a few mistakes and some walks and they just hit the ball really well. There isn’t much you can do about it when they’re hitting gaps all day.”

With the big deficit, Newsome made sure to get every player into the game. Along with Poole and Zimmerlein, Rudy Villagomez and Mattingly also pitched, while Tyson Zuniga got an inning in left field and an at-bat.

“You want it to happen when you’re ahead, but ultimately we had to scramble there and get everybody in because you never know when it’s going to happen again. You can’t take it for granted. You have to use the opportunities that are given to you. It was nice to get everybody in. Obviously, we would have liked to be on the winning end. Everybody knows that. But we lost to an incredibly talented Tremont team.”

Saturday was the final game as Panthers for Mattingly and Stunkel but not their final game together as both will play next season at Illinois Central College.

“I told Johnathon at the start of the year that we were going to get us some big hardware this year and we did it,” Mattingly said. “We couldn’t be more proud of each other and the whole team.”