St. Henry outslugs St. Marys

ST. MARYS - The St. Henry Redskins used three huge offensive innings to rally twice and defeat the St. Marys Roughriders, 18-14, on Thursday afternoon in nonleague baseball action at K.C. Geiger Park.

St. Henry improves to 2-0 on the season while St. Marys falls to 0-2 with the loss.

The Redskins bunched 13 of their hits in three innings, in which they scored their 18 runs. Neil Schwieterman led the way for St. Henry with five hits in five at-bats, with three RBI.

St. Marys got three hits each from Mitchell Knous, Paul Pfenning and Michael Huber.

Despite all the offense in this game, St. Henry was able to limit the offensive damage done by St. Marys by committing just one error and it was able to get key outs to end rallies. St. Marys stranded 10 runners, while St. Henry left just five on base.

"The key today was that we were able to take advantage of a couple of miscues and we bunched our hits and we were able to bunch our runs," said St. Henry coach John Dorner. "We never got down today, we kept plugging away and we were able to minimize damage by stranding a lot of their runners."

The other pleasant development for Dorner's squad on this day was the play of freshman Alex Post and sophomore Nathan Uhlenhake. Offensively, Uhlenhake, batting eighth, went 2-for-4 at the plate, with three runs scored and two RBI. Post, batting ninth in the order, went one-for-two at the plate, scoring twice and drove in a pair of runs.

Post also did a yeoman's job in relief as he pitched 21/3 innings and got the win.

"Nathan and Alex have been wonderful," said Dorner of his youngsters. "Alex came in to pitch when we needed him today and he just has not played like a freshman this year. Nathan has just been hitting. I have put him at five different positions this year and you just can't say enough about those two guys. You know the top of the order is going to be there and if you can continue to get that kind of production from the bottom of the order, you are going to have a successful season."

After falling behind 5-0 after one inning, St. Henry sent nine men to the plate, scoring six times to take its first lead. Neil Schwieterman had two RBI while Alex Post, Jason Westgerdes and Tyler Bruns each had an RBI in the frame.

St. Marys came right back and retook the lead, 9-6, scoring three in the third and one in the fourth. In the third, Mitch Knous doubled, and scored on a Derek Roop single. After a walk to Matt Watkins, D.J Manning singled in the second run of the inning with Watkins taking third. Watkins scored the third run of the inning on a wild pitch. The Roughriders added another run in the fourth as Paul Pfenning singled, went to second on a Sam Manning sacrifice bunt and scored on a single by Knous.

St. Henry took the lead for good batting around in the fifth inning and scoring five times. Brad Kremer led off with a double, went to third on a single by Schwieterman and scored on a wild pitch. After Tyler Bruns reached on a single with Schwieterman taking third, Kurt Koesters hit a ground ball to short and the throw was late to second, allowing Bruns to score.

Later with two outs, Uhlenhake tripled to the gap in right-centerfield to plate two runs and then Post plated the final run of the inning when he doubled down the line in leftfield.

St. Marys is back in action on Saturday at noon, hosting Auglaize County rival Minster in a doubleheader. St. Henry is also in action Saturday playing host to Wapakoneta and Coschocton in the Redskin Invitational.