By Marc Tobias
mtobias@dailystandard.com ST. HENRY — St. Henry trailed 4-3 headed into the bottom of the sixth inning, but was able to rally for five runs to upend Celina 8-4 on Monday at the Wally Post Athletic Complex.
The loss was Celina’s first of the season in six games while St. Henry improves to 3-3.
Celina’s Scott Boley took the mound in the bottom of the sixth in relief for Brian Gagle who allowed three runs in five innings.
Post singled off Boley to start the sixth, and then Brady Schmitz put down a sacrifice bunt to move Post into scoring position.
Matt Schlater then hit a single up the middle to tie the game at four apiece, and a Josh Schmackers single put two runners on base for Evan Bertke.
Bertke took advantage and hit a three-run blast over the right-centerfield wall to put the ’Skins out in front 7-4.
“Evan had a whale of a game for us and stepped up as a senior and had the big hit for a home run,” said St. Henry coach John Dorner.
Bertke finished by going 3-for-4 with two runs scored and five RBI.
Jeremy Schwieterman then reached on an error and moved to second when Kyle Homan was hit by a pitch.
Greg Uhlenhake then laced a double to right field to score Schwieterman and give Redskins starter Andy Dues a four-run cushion headed to the top of the seventh.
“For the most part each day we’ve gotten a little bit better and I see our sticks coming around a little bit,” Dorner said. “We knew we had to play real well to have a chance to beat Celina because they have a phenomenal ball club and we just kept our focus and I was real pleased with the fact that we fell down 4-3 and they bring in their ace closer and we were able to mount a comeback. That’s something we can build on in the future. That’s a big win for us.”
Dues shut down the Bulldogs in the seventh to pick up a seven inning complete game victory.
The ’Skins starter allowed four runs and nine hits while striking out five.
“He got a lot of pitches up more then he normally does, but he was able to change speeds he was able to throw several different pitches and was ahead in the count for the most part,” Dorner said. “He didn’t walk people (one walk) and got the lead off batter out in most of the innings. He was a true pitcher today.”
St. Henry took an early 3-0 (Continued from page 1B) lead in the second inning as the ÔSkins were able to take advantage of two Celina errors and a hit batter to post three runs.
“They got the big key hits late in the game and then early in the game they took advantage of our defensive miscues,” said Celina coach Bruce Boley. “We’d been playing solid defense all year and today we left a lot of our defense on the bus.
“The Dues kid threw a nice ball game, he did make a couple mistake pitches up but he made some big pitches when he had to and they made some plays when they had to,” Boley added.
Celina scored two runs in the fourth when Scott Boley hit a solo home run and Sean Boley scored on an error after he reached by hitting a double to center.
The Bulldogs other two runs came in the fifth when Brian Gagle tripled to score Jordan Heuker, and then Eric Braun executed a suicide squeeze to score Gagle.
Heuker finished by going 2-for-3 with one run scored while Scott Boley was 2-for-4 with one run and one RBI.
Bryan Post had a nice day for St. Henry as he went 2-for-3 with one run scored while Matt Schlater went 1-for-2 with two runs scored and an RBI.
Celina returns to action today at Sidney while St. Henry travels to Lehman on Thursday. |
