BRISTOL — The Mount Abraham Union High School baseball team came back from a tough home loss to BFA-St. Albans on Thursday to claim its first victory of the season in a game against Harwood in Duxbury on Saturday.
BFA-St. Albans rode a stellar pitching performance from southpaw Ryan Connor and a free-swinging attack to convincingly beat the Eagles, 12-1, at the Mount Abe diamond on April 25.
Connor gave up only five hits — all singles — and struck out six, pitching a complete game for the victory. He used an assortment of pitches to keep Eagle batters off their stride.
The Eagles scored their lone run in the fifth inning. With one out, junior Sean Wood hit a single over the second base bag. After center fielder Mike White-Coe popped out to the second baseman, third baseman Dylan Roscoe singled, sending Wood to third. Shortstop Nick Driscoll followed with a solid single to left field, bringing Wood in for the run.
But BFA by that time had already carved out an imposing lead. The Eagle tally made it 10-1, and the Bobwhites would gild the lily with two more runs for the 12-1 victory.
The Bobwhites broke into the scoring column in the first inning against Eagles starter Sawyer Kamman. BFA shortstop Nick Berno led off the game with a triple and scored on a single by the next batter, third baseman Dana Duquette. He moved to third on a double by centerfielder Darren Callan. Kamman buckled down and struck out the next two batters, right fielder Dylan Callan and the opposing pitcher, Connor.
That’s when things got interesting.
Bobwhites catcher Jordan Stone hit a sharp ground ball in the direction of Eagles second baseman Jared Danyow. The ball snuck through, allowing Duquette and Darren Callan to cross the plate, apparently for a 3-0 Bobwhites lead. But Eagles Coach Jeff Stetson successfully argued with the umpires that Callan had interfered with the play by shielding view of the ball from the fielder, Danyow. Callan was therefore ruled out and the two extra runs were taken off the scoreboard.
But BFA would quickly atone for the error to put a crooked number on the board in the second inning.
With one out and a runner on second, Bobwhites left fielder Will Saffo singled, then stole second base. The next batter, Berno, knocked in both base runners with a long single, making it 3-0 BFA. Berno promptly stole second and was pushed to third on a single by Duquette. Berno scored on a sacrifice fly by Darren Callan, making it 4-0. The next batter, Dylan Callan, knocked in Duquette with a double to make it 5-0 at the end of the second inning.
Stetson replaced Kamman on the mound with Josh Cyr to start the third inning. But the Bobwhites, swinging aggressively and not settling for a lot of walks, took a lot of successful cuts at Cyr, adding runs in the third, fourth, fifth and seventh innings to round out the scoring.
The victory improved BFA’s record to 3-1 and kept Mount Abe winless for the season at 0-3.
Stetson was candid in his assessment of Thursday’s game.
“They hit the ball extremely well, and I don’t think we hit the ball well at all today,” Stetson said. “Their lefty pitched a very nice game for them, he changed speeds and had us off balance all day and made us look anemic at the plate.”
But Saturday’s game was a different story as the Eagles got their bats moving. Mount Abe shot out to a 6-0 lead in the first two innings. Despite a solo homer by Riley Abair, Harwood could not make it back into the game.
The final tally was Mount Abe 8-Harwood 1.
Winning pitcher Sawyer Kamman allowed just four hits with four strikeouts and one walk. Junior Aaron Benway went 2-for-4 with a double and senior Cody Alexander also doubled.
Now 1-3, Mount Abe will host Colchester on Tuesday, and play at Middlebury on Thursday.