OLD ORCHARD BEACH – It wasn’t until the top of the eighth inning that either the Red Storm or the Blue Blazes sent a man across home plate Saturday morning in the semifinal round of the SMAA championship.

When that finally happened, the man was Westbrook’s Kyle Schumacher, speeding in to score on a wild pitch and igniting a flash of runs Scarborough couldn’t match as Westbrook won 4-0. The Blue Blazes went on to beat Marshwood 8-5 in the final later that day.

“[The score] was wicked close all the way, and I knew once we got that first one, [the game] was ours,” Westbrook starting pitcher Ethan Nash said, after the meeting. “Nothing was going to stop us at that point.”

The regular season is over, and the MPA Class A playoff seeds are set; the SMAAs have no bearing on that tournament.

Scarborough snuffed Westbrook 7-0 back on April 25, a clash that may have been on Storm head coach Ryan Jones’s mind after his squad’s extra-innings fall in the SMAAs.

“They put the pressure on us and I don’t think we handled it as well has we have in the past, or as well as we could have today,” Jones said.

Blazes coach Greg Souza gave Nash the ball to open the game despite having flashier men available for the mound. “We talk about [Zack] Bean and [Keenan] Lowe – that’s who I talk about all the time, Bean and Lowe – but [Nash]…pitches great. He doesn’t throw the ball hard, but he pitches. Same thing with [Aaron] Duncanson – those guys don’t get any credit. They’d be pitching anywhere. We get caught up in the hard throwers.”

Jones started 6-0 Ben Greenberg, who recently won Gatorade player of the year for the state. Greenberg’s .54 ERA foreshadowed the nil-scoring first seven innings. Those weren’t hitless innings – the hits just refused to drop one after the other after the other, each team’s defense wrestling the opposition’s offense to a two-hour stalemate.

In the top of the seventh, however, Jones swapped out Greenberg for sophomore Nate Wessel. “Ben had hit his pitch count,” Jones said of the decision. “It’s a hot day, there’s no point in keeping a kid out there any more than you have to. We’re going to need him in the upcoming week, so we just wanted him to go get some work, rather than sitting for eight, 10 days … I wanted to get another pitcher some work as well. That was our decision, we stuck with it.”

Wessel navigated his first three outs with no problems, but got into trouble in the eighth. He hit batter Kyle Schumacher with the ball, sending him to first, and when Collin Joyce then bunted, Wessel slid past the ball in the grass and couldn’t recover quickly enough to get the toss to first in time, leaving Joyce safe at first and Schumacher at second.

Wessel’s frustration showed in his punch to the turf, and perhaps in his next few pitches, to Ryan Gilligan. Wessel’s first errant throw advanced Schumacher and Joyce to third and second, respectively, and his second errant throw brought Schumacher home for the win-clinching run.

“We get through Greenberg,” Souza said. “He doesn’t beat us. So now they go to somebody else, confidence comes up. They get a young guy in there, [we] make some noise, get on base.”

Wessel eventually walked Gilligan, and up stepped Kyle Heath to the plate. Heath’s .444 average earned him this year’s SMAA batting title, and means he’s eminently dangerous in the box.

“I just try to go up there with a clear mind every time,” Heath said. “If he throws me a good pitch, take a cut at it, ‘cause I’m just trying to hit the ball hard, every at bat, and you know, usually it goes my way.”

Heath’s drive to centerfield landed him on first and scored Joyce. During Lowe’s at-bat, Heath stole second. Lowe struck out swinging, and Derek Bouchard flied out to right, but that pop gave Gilligan the opportunity to tag up at third and make it home in time for dinner. 3-0, Westbrook, and Bean took his turn facing Wessel. Bean flied to left, and the ball dropped, bringing Heath home to post the final tally, 4-0.

Jones nevertheless is proud of Wessel’s work. “He did all right. He’s young. I think he learned from this … as will our whole team. He did exactly what we wanted to. [Seventh] inning, threw strikes, and then [eighth] inning, like I said, they put the pressure on us, and ended up walking out with the win.”

That win goes to Lowe, who picked up where Nash left off in the bottom of the sixth. Wessel absorbs the loss.

“It’s just good to beat a good team,” Heath said. “We beat a good pitcher and made the plays in the field…We played like we’ve been playing. We got base runners with Greenberg, and once he came out, we felt like that was kind of the end of it… That gave us a big spark of life, and we were able to hit the ball and score some runs.”

Souza heaped praise on his squad’s collective efforts, but singled out Heath’s performance in the Scarborough game as especially noteworthy. “He should be the MVP of the league,” Souza said of Heath. “He makes us win.”

Westbrook runner Zack Bean and Scarborough third baseman Kevin Dryzga look for the call.
Westbrook’s Collin Joyce trots across home plate to put his team on top, 2-0, in the top of the 8th.
Scarborough shortstop Nick Bagley.
Scarborough catcher Sam Wessel reaches for a fly ball popped towards the backstop.