MORGANTOWN — Dale Miller Field played host to an intra-county baseball matchup as the Clay-Battelle Cee-Bees and Trinity Christian Warriors took to the diamond for the first of their two meetings this season.
The Cee-Bees took advantage when they needed and capitalized on key opportunities to earn a 10-3 victory over the Warriors under the lights at Mylan Park.
It only took six hits to produce 10 runs for C-B as TCS committed six errors on defense, some which led to runs for the victors.
C-B sophomore Cayden Strosnider earned the win on the mound, going five innings and allowing three runs on seven hits, striking out seven batters and only walking one.
TCS sophomore Parker Hopkins got the nod on Monday and went four innings while giving up just one earned run and nine strikeouts, walking two batters.
“We were trying to get some small ball going to move some runners, and Austyn (Foley) took care of that,” C-B coach Jeff Coombs said. “Our defense was strong, Cayden just ran out of gas there toward the end but we had a great effort overall.”
The scoring was opened in the top of the third inning as a balk by Hopkins with runners on the corners scored the first run and the Foley’s first hit of the game brought JC Spears around for the second.
The 2-0 lead was extended in the top of the fifth as an infield error on a throw to first stretched the lead to 3-0, and the fourth came on a sacrifice fly by Cameron Mercer that scored Spears from third.
The Warriors got to work in the bottom half of the inning as Hopkins smacked a single to center field that scored Noah Toler and Sam Fulk to cut the lead in half, 4-2. Then, one batter later Brock Shuba stole home on a wild pitch to cut the lead to one.
TCS earned two quick outs to open the sixth but Foley had other plans when he blasted a bases-loaded double to the opposite field that cleared the bases and swelled the lead back to four, 7-3.
The Cee-Bees added another run before the end of the sixth and two more in the seventh on an RBI single and a wild pitch to take the lead 10-3 and a three up, three down bottom of the seventh ended the game.
“The better team won today,” TCS coach Wes Hopkins said. “We had some mental mistakes and didn’t take advantage of things we needed to. We get ahead on some of our batters and then lose the at-bat when we have them 0-2 in the count. Free passes hurt in baseball.”
The Cee-Bees will travel to Cameron today while TCS has the day off before a road game at Madonna on Wednesday.
“I knew it was going to be a fight tonight,” Coombs said. “A win like this early on will help our confidence tremendously.”
BOX SCORE
Clay-Battelle 10, Trinity Christian 3
C-B 002 024 2 – 10 6 3
TCS 000 030 0 – 3 7 6
CLAY-BATTELLE — Coen 5110 Spears 2300 Foley 4111 Statler 3011 Mercer 4011 Henthorn 3100 Strosnider 4100 Danser 1100 Summers 1000 Stewart 4221
TRINITY CHRISTIAN — Shuba 4110 Hopkins 4022 Dinkel 3000 Timperio 3000 Shuba 2020 Parker 3000 McPherson 3020 Toler 2100 Fulk 3100
2B — CB: Statler
WP: Strosnider 5.0ip 7h 3er 1bb 7k
LP: Hopkins 4.1ip 2h 4r (1er) 2bb 9k
