Wheeling Park’s Gian Degenova receives congratulations from head coach Steve Myers after Degenova hit a solo home run to deep left-center in the third inning to give the Patriots a 1-0 lead Friday against Brooke in an OVAC Class 5A semifinal. Wheeling Park won, 5-2.

WHEELING — What a better way to christen your new $1.5 million baseball field than to win an OVAC Class 5A semifinal game against your arch-rival.

Wheeling Park’s road warriors, who have played their home games at West Liberty University’s Kovalick Field this season while work on their home field took place, made their home debut on the all-turf facility one to remember with a 5-2 victory over Brooke on Friday before a large gathering on a beautiful day for baseball.

“This was a really nice way to break in this new facility,” Wheeling Park head coach Steve Myers said. “That’s a good ball team over there. This win means a lot to our seniors. We’ve got seven of them that have been with us for a while.

“Gian has hit some balls like that this year, but you could just see from his vibe that he really wanted to win this game,” Myer said Degenova. “He had two big hits for us and then came in and closed it out.”

With the win, their second over the Bruins this season, sends the Patriots to their third consecutive Class 5A final where they will meet University, a 10-4 victor over city rival Morgantown, last night. Wheeling Park had been 1-1 against the Mohigans in the past two OVAC finals, winning in 2021 before losing last spring.

Wheeling Park’s Luke Doyle and Brooke’s Garrett Hornick were hooked up in a pitcher’s duel until one swing of the bat in the bottom of the third.

However, Hornick left a 2-2 curveball up in the zone with two outs and Wheeling Park senior Gian Degenova blasted it well over the fence in deep left-center for a 1-0 lead.

Two innings later, Degenova blistered a two-out single through the left side of the infield as Nate Bittinger hustled around from second to make it 2-0.

A three-run sixth gave Doyle some breathing room at 5-0. Grant Simons lined a double over the centerfielder’s head leading off and came around to score on Quinn Jamison’s single to center. Jamison advanced to second when Nate Simon bunted for a hit. Tino Nardone sacrificed both runners up 90 feet before a wild pitch allowed Jamison to race home and Simon advanced to third. He would score on Nate Bittinger’s groundout.

Doyle got the win with three punch outs and just two walks. He allowed four singles among his 94 pitches, of which 55 were strikes.

“Luke has had a good effort every time he has taken the mound for us,” Myers said. “I’m sure that he wanted to finish the game, but sometimes you give the ball to someone else and let them do their job.”

Brooke plated a pair of runs in the seventh as Raymond DeFranco drew a two-out walk. Anthony Bachinski’s sinking liner to left dropped and allowed DeFranco to take third with Bachinski pulling into second. Degenova took over on the mound for Doyle and DeFranco sped home on a wild pitch and Bachinski took third where he raced home when on an errant pickoff attempt.

“If you would have told me yesterday (Thursday) that we’d be down 2-0 in the sixth inning, I would’ve been really happy with that,” Brooke head coach C.J. Besece said. “Garrett pitched a heck of a game for us. He really stepped it up today. He pitched great and all the guys in the dugout feel for him right now. They feel like they should;ve done more for him, but we couldn’t get the clutch hit when we needed it.

“Their pitcher pitched great. We didn’t quit. We battled back and scored a couple of runs there in the seventh with two outs.” he added. “I just told them that we’ve got more goals ahead of us. Sure, making the OVAC finals was one of our goals, but the season isn’t over. We’ve got a lot of baseball ahead of us.”

Bachinski struck out five, walked two and yielded six hits. He was relieved by Charlie Fuscardo in the seventh.

“Charlie is our only senior, so we will be back here next year.”

Simons added a single to his double. Bachinski had two singles.

The time and date for the Class 5A final will be announced sometime Sunday.

GAME NOTES

– The start of the game was delayed 45 minutes due to Brooke having a problem getting a bus.

-The game took 1-hour, 38-minutes.