Mounties bomb Blairsville in first round

Jon Christoff For the CDT

PHILIPSBURG — The Philipsburg- Osceola baseball team has had its share of success in the postseason in the past, and the Mounties got this year’s District 6 Class AA tournament started off on the right foot with a 12-0 blanking of Blairsville on Friday.

CDT photo/Melissa Doss

Philipsburg-Osceola’s Drew Bryan, center, is congratulated by teammates after hitting a home run in the fourth inning of the Mounties’ 12-0 win over Blairsville in a first-round District 6 Class AA baseball game on Friday.

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P-O, district champions in 2006-07, smacked 15 hits off two Bobcat pitchers, including a pair of home runs, and pitcher Storm Bumbarger scattered four hits in improving to 4-4 with the five-inning win.

“We’ve done pretty well the last four years in districts,” said P-O coach Doug Sankey. “I tell these guys with the schedule we play, the competition we see every game, that prepares us for districts. We squeaked in at 9-9, but we’re very capable of winning every game. We just have to play well.”

The Mounties held a 3-0 lead heading into the fifth inning, where everything began to click at the plate.

P-O sent 10 hitters to the plate in the frame, where it connected on seven hits, including a grand slam from Paul Hahn that ended the game.

Hayden Hayward, who got the Mounties on the board with an RBI single in the second inning, plated two more in the fifth, while Mike Marcinko also drove in a run.

“We’ve been getting guys on base,” Sankey said, “but we’ve got to hit better in the clutch. We’ve got to do a better job of moving guys over from first to second and second to third, and we’ve got to drive them in. In the last inning, we got some guys on and made something happen.”

While Blairsville pitchers struggled with P-O’s potent offense, Bumbarger was making quick work of the Bobcats.

Bumbarger faced a couple of threats, but wiggled out of each. Blairsville had runners on in four of the five innings, but couldn’t get anyone past second base.

“He’s been our No. 2 all year,” said Sankey of Bumbarger. “When he’s getting that fastball and locating it on the outside corner, he’s difficult to hit.

“He has a good curveball and he limited his walks. The last couple of games he’s had three, four, five walks. Today, his control was good and the guys he got behind on, he came right after.”

Luke Curtis led off the second with a double and scored on the first of Hayward’s two hits, while Zack Czap plated Drew Bryan with a single of his own.

Bryan accounted for the other P-O run before the fifth, as he opened the home half of the fourth with a solo blast.

Until the final inning, Blairsville pitcher Jonathan Santoro kept his team close after working out of jams in the first and third innings.

“We were hitting the ball hard, but we were just hitting it on the ground,” Sankey said. “We only had one strikeout, so we were putting the ball in play. We were going to get to him sooner or later, I was hoping.”

With the win, P-O moves into the quarterfinal round to face top-seeded Mount Union. Sankey will go with ace Luke Curtis on Monday against the Trojans and feels it is a winnable game.

“We’ve got to play a clean game to beat them,” said Sankey. “We’re going to have to play our best game. Anytime Luke is throwing, we think we can beat anybody. That’s just the way it is when he’s pitching.

“We’re going to have to field the ball, and we’re going to have to hit with guys on base. We’re going to have to play a clean game to beat them. We’ll need our best effort.”