Patriots Storm Back In Fifth To Advance Over Buckhannon-Upshur
Wheeling Park’s Nate Simon throws a pitch in the seventh inning Thursday during the Patriots’ 5-2 playoff victory over Buckhannon Upshur on Patriot Field.
Nick Henthorm
Wheeling Park’s Nate Simon throws a pitch in the seventh inning Thursday during the Patriots’ 5-2 playoff victory over Buckhannon Upshur on Patriot Field.
Nick Henthorm
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WHEELING - The Wheeling Park Patriots are moving on to the W.Va. Class AAAA Region 1 championship after defeating Buckhannon-Upshur 5-2 on Thursday evening at Patriot Field.
The Patriots found themselves down 2-1 after four innings, but stacked up four runs in the fifth frame to lurch ahead and kept the Bucs off the scoreboard the rest of the way.
"We're excited to keep playing," Wheeling Park head coach Steve Myers said. "This is what you work for, to take the steps to advance to your goal. We've taken step one, now we'll get ready for step two."
Wheeling Park does not yet know who they will face in the regional championship, with Morgantown and University set to play for the honor on Friday. Morgantown would need to beat University once to advance, while University would need to beat Morgantown twice.
Wheeling Park took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning after Nolan Yanchak cracked an RBI double, but Buckhannon Upshur scratched across two in the third inning off a single by Wyatt Mason.
The dam burst in the fifth inning for the Patriots. Key hits from Kolten Whitmire, Nate Simon and Ryland Robb all brought home runs as Myers' preaching of patience paid off.
"We always talk about having good at-bats, and sometimes it'll take you one or two times to see the fruits of good at-bats, you can have a good at-bat and not get a hit," Myers said. "Our guys just stuck with the program. We had a couple of clutch hits with two outs, middle of the lineup, bottom of the lineup came through for us. It's a team sport and we played that whole game as a team."
Whitmire and Robb each knocked one-RBI singles, and Simon crunched a two-run double.
Park's bullpen grabbed ahold of the game over the last four innings, holding the Bucs scoreless with Coldin Burkhart pitching three innings before handing it over to Nate Simon in the seventh, who worked through a couple of base runners to eventually induce a game-ending groundout to second baseman Miles Gorby.
Simon struck out two to notch the save.
"It's just trusting each other," Myers said of his team's pitching performances. "Hand the ball to the next guy and trust he'll do his job, then hand the ball to the next guy and so on. That's what we try to do."
Should Morgantown advance to the regional championship, it would make for the latest meeting between two squads who have faced each other thrice thus far into the season. Wheeling Park won the first two meetings, but Morgantown took the most recent meeting, the OVAC 5A Championship, 4-2. None of those games were decided by more than two runs.