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Wheeling Central Survives Madonna Rally in Class A Region One, Section One Elimination Game

Maroon Knights advance, set up rematch with Cameron

Photo by Kyle Lutz Wheeling Central’s Avery Lee tags out Madonna’s Christian Ridgway during a West Virginia Class A Region One, Section One matchup.

WHEELING — When the postseason rolls around, the term ‘survive and advance’ can be thrown around in any sport. For the Wheeling Central baseball team, it lived it Tuesday during a West Virginia Class A Region One, Section One matchup against Madonna at the J.B. Chambers Complex at I-470 Fields.

The Maroon Knights took a commanding 9-0 lead, only to see the Blue Dons rip off seven unanswered runs to get within striking distance. However, the lead was too much and Wheeling Central hung on to win 9-7 to advance to the sectional championship game.

The Maroon Knights will face off against Cameron at 6 p.m. tonight. The Dragons won the first matchup, 5-3, on Tuesday. Wheeling Central will have to beat the Dragons twice in order to claim the sectional title.

“The last two weeks, we’ve made things interesting in every game we’ve played,” Wheeling Central coach Bo McConnaughy said. “It seems that they sit back a little bit when we had that 9-0 lead. We get the bases loaded and could have broken the game open right there. But that didn’t happen.

“But we hit (Wednesday) and made defensive plays except for that one inning. You’re in the game with that. We’ll take the win, it wasn’t pretty, but it’s a win. And we’re still in it. That’s all that counts.”

He’s right. With the exception of a fifth inning where the Blue Dons sent 11 players to the batters box, all the other innings were virtually a textbook performance by the Wheeling Central defense.

Thanks to a pair of double plays and a few pick offs, Wheeling Central only faced three Madonna batters in the six other innings.

“I didn’t know that, so that was a great thing,” McConnaughy said. “I wasn’t upset because we had a lot of bad hops in that inning. Sometimes you have to get in front of those and knock them down. Sometimes that’s baseball and you got to play. We gave in a little bit, but we didn’t cave and that’s a good thing. We’re still playing.”

Wheeling Central also dished out 11 hits on the evening and took advantage of five Blue Dons errors in the early going. It batted through its lineup in the second and third inning as it plated four runs in each.

Sonny Peluchette led the third off with a single followed by Dom Pompeo reaching base safely thanks to an error in the outfield. Jordan Waterhouse then hit a sacrifice fly to make it 5-0 in favor of the Maroon Knights.

Michael Toepfer got in on the action with his first hit of the game that also plated a run. After a strikeout, Kyle Newmeyer belted a RBI double. Avery Lee then supplied his second hit of the contest to make it 8-0.

Wheeling Central plated its final run in the fourth when Toepfer hit sacrifice fly that scored Jordan Waterhouse, who had a triple at his at bat.

In the fifth, Madonna started making its comeback. Dom Mazur led the inning off with a single. After a strikeout, Dom Brncic, Dylan McDaniel and Dylan Austin all supplied singles.

However, with two outs, going into the top of the order, that’s when the Blue Dons plated five runs. Matthew Amaismeyer and Gavin Dietrich both supplied RBI singles while Luke Beatty made it to base safely thanks to a throwing error that also plated two runs. Mazur capped the rally with his second single of the inning that scored Beatty to make it a 9-7 contest.

“They battled all year,” Madonna coach Tim Provenzano said about his team. “This is a scrappy group. I got 11 guys on my roster. Everyone played a role this year and it showed. Sometimes, you’re gonna have a 30-man roster, but I’ll take an 11-man roster like this any day of the week.

“These guys battled. They battled hard all year and (Wednesday) showed. When they went up 9-0, I knew at some point we’re going to turn it over and make a comeback somewhere. We just fell a little bit short.”

Mazur and McDaniel both had two hits for the Blue Dons.

For the Maroon Knights, Jacob Rine tallied three singles while Waterhouse had a single to go along with his triple and Lee supplied two singles.

“Hey. I told them (Wednesday). You got to play every game like it’s the last one you’re going to play for the year,” McConnaughy said. “You gotta to go all out. No matter what happens, you got to give everything you got every pitch, every play and every inning. We’ll find out.”

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