Mounts Arms Quiet Falcons

Capitalizing on four errors and some timely hitting, Ephrata pushed its way past Cedar Crest, 6-1, in Section One-Two crossover baseball Monday night.

For the first five innings under the lights at War Memorial Field, the teams battled back and forth with no more than a run separating them. After Ephrata took a 1-0 lead on a throwing error in the second, Cedar Crest answered right back, tying the game in the third inning.

Crest’s Kyle Poorman crushed a one-out triple to the fence in right field, bringing in Logan Horn.

The extra-base hit would prove to be the Falcons last hit of the night, however, as Ephrata’s Adam Schwartz and Hunter Johns teamed up to retire the final 13 batters of the game.

“We were in the ballgame up until the bottom of the sixth and then we had a couple of mental mistakes, and that’s what happens against a team like this,” Cedar Crest coach Josh Brown said. “They like to run the bases, they can play a lot of small ball.

“Our kids have to do a little bit of a better job at being mentally prepared for that and anticipating those types of things, but obviously, we did not hit the baseball well either, so that doesn’t help.”

The score remained 2-1 until the sixth inning, when Ephrata (7-3, 9-3) capitalized on another error. With runners on first and second, Adam Campbell tried to leg out a bouncer in the infield. As the throw to first sailed past the bag, both runners came in to score.

Three batters later, Nate Young smacked a two-out single into right to bring in Campbell and Andrew Thomas, putting the game out of reach as Schwartz and Johns quieted Crest’s potent offense.

“We knew especially their top four hitters were some serious gamers, but we attacked them pretty heavily with fastballs today — and a couple of sliders,” Schwartz said of the game plan.

Crest (6-3, 9-3) leadoff hitter Logan Horn would open the game with a single and Nate Tovinger and Jonathan LaBarbera would add base hits in the first two innings, but Ephrata’s strategy worked from there.

Schwartz struck out 11, walked only two and scattered four hits over 5.2 innings.

Johns would get a strikeout to end the fifth and set down the next six batters he faced, bookending the relief appearance with another strikeout to secure Ephrata’s seventh win in its last eight games.

• Prev
• Next