Photo by Andrew Grimm Pitcher Gian DeGenova of the WildThings aims and fires during Thursday’s game against Post 33.

By ANDREW GRIMM

Staff Writer

STEUBENVILLE — When a team is trying to mesh players together from multiple different high school/college teams, that process can have some bumps in the road.

Jefferson County Teramana Post 33 ran into one of those bumps on Thursday with an 11-0 setback to the visiting Wheeling WildThings.

“This was our fifth game,” Post 33 head coach Anthony Pierro said. “We had about eight or nine guys on base, but we couldn’t get any timely hits.”

Post 33, which suffered its first defeat after a 4-0 start to the season, was also plagued by some miscues in the field.

“Honestly, defensively we played pretty lazy,” Pierro said. “Like I told these guys, we’ve got 14-15 guys that can compete for jobs, so the best nine kids that want to hustle and make plays, those are the guys that are going to play.

“We’re going to find out one way or another who wants to play and who doesn’t.”

Another factor working against Jefferson County was that it had not been on the field for a game since Sunday, with rain earlier in the week washing out games.

“I can give them (the weather making them rusty), but there were three or four hustle plays that, it doesn’t matter how many days we’ve been off, we’ve got to make them,” Pierro said.

Indian Creek’s Ty Householder started for Jefferson County and went the first four innings, yielding five runs.

Big Red’s Cooper Blackburn and Edison’s Gage Cline had hits for Post 33, whose best chance to get a run in came in the fifth when the bases were full of Jefferson Countians, but the timely hit didn’t come.

Post 33 left men on third twice earlier as well.

A half an inning later, the WildThings plated half a dozen to put things way out of reach.

Wheeling’s Luke Marsh had an RBI triple in the sixth-inning onslaught, while Will James singled in a run, Braden Sobutka drew a bases-loaded walk to plate another, then Brennan Sobutka knocked a bases-clearing double.

Brennan Sobutka, who was also the winning pitcher, had an early two-run single to give him a five-RBI day for the WildThings.

Adam Och also had an RBI for Wheeling in the game.

Post 33 will look to bounce back this weekend when it hosts doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday at the Edison Unified Multisport Complex, where it will play most of its home games.

Thursday’s game was played at Vaccaro due to a Colt League game taking place at Edison.

Saturday’s twinbill is against St. Clairsville and begins at 1 p.m., while Sunday is a makeup against the Ohio Valley Mountaineers, beginning at noon.

. “Hopefully the kids get to together, we have a long weekend coming up,” Pierro said.