Nordonia baseball squad finishes season with split

Email To A Friend
Printer Friendly
Comments

---

by Devan Matthews

Correspondent

The Nordonia High School baseball team finished its 2008 season recently by splitting a pair of ballgames.

The Knights beat Northeast Ohio Conference (NOC) Lake Division rival Valley Forge by the score of 6-2 at home May 20.

Two days later, Nordonia dropped a heartbreaker to division rival Brush on the road. The Arcs edged the Knights by a 3-0 margin in eight innings.

Consequently, Nordonia ended the campaign with an overall record of 11-16. The Knights also sported a mark of 5-5 within the division.

Zach Simon was Nordonia's starting pitcher in the victory over the Patriots. He threw a complete game to earn the win.

Offensively, Trevor Hawks was 1-for-2 with an RBI and a run scored, while Jason Szabo went 2-for-2 with two singles and four RBIs.

The Valley Forge game was also Senior Recognition Day for Nordonia.

The game against Brush was a make-up contest from earlier in the campaign. Alex Smith was the starter on the mound for Nordonia, and like Hawks, he pitched well.

Unfortunately, so did Brush's pitcher. As a result, the game was scoreless after seven innings of play, sending the game into extra innings.

"Their pitcher did a good job of changing speeds, much like he did the first time he pitched against us," said Nordonia head coach Eric Cormell. "We had a lot of line drives and hit the ball well in some cases, but we couldn't push any runs across."

Smith had a one-hitter heading into the bottom of the eighth inning. However, that's when disaster struck.

Brush managed to get two runners on base before Smith made a rare mistake. He hung a curveball to the next batter, who smashed an opposite-field, three-run, walk-off homer.

That gave the Arcs a dramatic 3-0 victory.

"Alex pitched extremely well," said Cormell. "He had 10 strikeouts, and he had only allowed one hit before that last inning."

Nordonia collected four hits overall. Jason Jacobs was 1-for-3 to pace the Knights.

Nordonia played a solid game defensively, as well, as the Knights were not guilty of any errors in the field.

"We won more games this season than the team did in the past two years [combined]," said Cormell. "The record might not show it, but the guys worked hard. We were victims of youth and a lack of experience, but the guys didn't let that stop them from giving their all and finishing the season strong."

E-mail: stowsports@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3113