Sports
Baseball: Atholton Downs Wilde Lake in Rain-Delayed Marathon
It took four days, but the Atholton Raiders withstood all the rain delays and finished off the Wildecats Thursday afternoon in a game that began on Monday.
A doubleheader is no new event for a baseball player, because two games in a day are typical in many situations. But how about half a game in one day and the other half in the next? That is exactly what happened to Wilde Lake High School and Atholton High for their second-round playoff matchup.
After three innings of baseball on Monday, rain postponed the game for three days. They completed the last four innings on Thursday afternoon. After leading 3-0 through Monday, the host Atholton Raiders completed the victory by a final of 5-1.
The win improves the third-seeded Raiders to 17-2 on the year and advances them to the next round of the 3A East regional playoffs. They will play Reservoir High School in the third round. Atholton’s only county loss this season came to the undefeated Reservoir team.
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The first half of the game played on Monday featured great hitting by Atholton and shutdown pitching by the team’s starter, senior Jon Thews. Thews went three scoreless innings, only facing eleven hitters while striking out three Wildecats.
The rain delay then took him out of the game and will give Coach Kevin Kelly a chance to put him on the mound in the next round.
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Junior Josh Martin took over for Thews on Thursday and continued right where Thews left off on Monday. Martin gave up only one run over four innings of work while allowing only one hit and striking out two.
“He [Martin] did great, and now Thews is rested, so we’ll be going into the tournament as well-rested as we can be as far as pitching. Hopefully that’ll help us,” Kelly said.
The Raiders' offense got going early in the first part of the game, with leadoff hitter Kory Britton kicking off the bottom of the first with a double. He would eventually come around to score on a Paul Beers ground out.
Like Britton, the first two Atholton hitters in the second inning would also come around to score. Sophomore Paul Burmester and junior Jake Yasenka both singled to start the inning. Both scored on a double by the lone freshman on the team, Brady Acker. Acker hit .315 during the regular season with 12 RBIs.
“I think we’ve been hitting the ball pretty well. Hopefully that will continue,” Kelly said. “It’s really come on the last five or six games. We just hope it can keep up for another for or five games.”
The game was then suspended due to the rain.
Coming into Thursday, Atholton had to rebuild its momentum, although they had the 3-0 lead to play with. That momentum came in the form of Britton, the senior star who will either be playing junior college ball in Florida next year or playing for the University of Maryland.
With one out in the bottom of the fourth inning after a botched suicide squeeze attempt—and with Acker on second base—Britton got a hold of a Mike Bucci curveball and crushed it over the right field fence for his fifth home run of the year.
“He threw a curveball inside and I just had a nice and easy swing,” said Britton. “We came into the second half of this game and got two runners on right away and the [botched squeeze] killed all our momentum. The two run shot just kind of put it away.”
Up next for the Raiders is a trip to Reservoir High on Friday to take on the undefeated Gators.
