The Starr’s Mill Baseball team is on a 7-game winning streak after facing teams considered easier competition. While the wins have kept the Panthers rolling, the stretch has also brought fewer challenges. Playing easier opponents started to show in last Wednesday’s game against Mcintosh where the Panthers ended up winning 10-6 but not without a hard battle from the Chiefs.
“It’s hard to ramp back up, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do in practice,” head coach Brent Moseley said. “You have to train your eyes when you’re hitting. You’re seeing 75 mile per hour balls versus 85 mile an hour balls, and that’s a big difference, so you have to train your eyes. That’s what we’ve been doing on the pitching machine, doing a lot of things trying to keep our timing for better pitching.”
The Chiefs struck first with a run in the opening inning. The Panthers retaliated by scoring five runs in the second inning holding McIntosh 5-1. McIntosh answered in the third inning, tying the game at 5-5.
Both teams added a run in the fourth to make it 6-6. The two innings that followed were scoreless for both teams until the seventh inning where the Panthers secured the win with four more runs, leaving the score 10-6.
“[Beating McIntosh] feels good,” senior Brody Whitman said. “We work well as a team and we really did good coming back in the game. We had a bad game, defensively, but then came back from it.”
The Panther offense powered the team to a 10-6 win with nine total hits. Whitman led the team with two hits, including a home run, followed by sophomore Spencer Ukleja with another two runs. Sophomores Jacob Hogan, Max Mothershed, John Mattingly, and juniors Atley Schwarzrock, Tanner Ivaska, and Khyler Rogers all contributed one run each.
“I don’t think it was our best game, on defense,” senior Parker Williams said. “I think we are a lot better than that but we kind of had to power through and manage ourselves the best we could and get it done with the bat so it could make up for it.”
On defense, the Panthers relied on three pitchers to secure the win. Senior Brock Rein opened the game pitching two innings with two strikeouts. Sophomore Braeden Simmons followed by pitching a part of an inning with one strikeout before Williams earned the win pitching four innings with four strikeouts.
The seventh win in the team’s current win streak came in last night’s victory over Griffin. The Panthers are currently 6-0 in the region and 9-2 overall.
As the victories continue to stack up, the close game against McIntosh just proves that they need to make adjustments as they face stronger opponents later in the season.
Starr’s Mill travels to Mundy’s Mill tonight to begin another three-game series in region play.