By Drew Terhall

Dailyadvocate.com

ANSONIA — The Ansonia baseball team ends their week with a 10-0 conference win over Tri-Village at home on April 20.

The Tigers have been playing great, competitive baseball this week. Ansonia head coach Dustin Hecht said he wanted to see his team continue their hot streak at the plate. The bats got out early in this game.

“We’ve been playing real competitive. We went up to New Bremen and we had nine hits last night. Coming in, we wanted to see that continue today. I think we had 10 hits today,” Hecht said.

In the bottom of the second inning, freshman Kam Ingle drove in a run to make it 1-0. With one out in the inning, Ansonia had bases loaded.

Tri-Village got the second out and were one away from limiting the damage. But senior Keegen Weiss stepped up and hit a two-run double to make it 3-0.

Junior Asher Shives drove in a run and senior Trevor Hemmerich drove in two on a double to cap off the six-run second inning.

Tri-Village head coach Josh Davies said so far this season, the team has played some good innings that is overshadowed by one bad inning.

“It’s kind of been the story of our season. We will play several good innings and then we have that one big inning that puts us behind the eight ball,” Davies said.

The Patriots started the game getting two guys on base and in scoring position in the first inning. But, they couldn’t get one to score.

As the game went on, it became harder for the Patriots to get a rally going. Once Hemmerich started to settle in on the mound, Tri-Village saw less and less base runners.

Davies said Hemmerich did a great job keeping his team off balanced at the plate and keeping his base runners in check. Even when they got base runners on, they didn’t go far.

Hecht said that’s the kind of pitcher Hemmerich is. Once he gets going, it’s hard to score runs on him.

“Once he settled in, he was lights out for us. That’s where he’s been. Once he settles in, he’s usual right on it,” Hecht said.

The Tigers scored four more runs in the fourth inning to get in position to grab the run-rule win. Freshman Lander Shives had a two-run single. Ingle drove in a run on a sacrifice groundout and another run scored on a wild pitch.

Hecht said he was happy to see the team not shut down after gaining a big lead early and keeping the bats going.

Tri-Village gave it their best shot to stay in the game. But, Hemmerich was too much for them as he got the final three outs for the win.

Hemmerich pitched all five innings and had seven strikeouts while allowing one hit.

The Patriots are 3-6 with an 0-4 WOAC record. Davies said with the team being young, he wants to see the team in different game situations. It’s all part of the process of getting better.

“We are trying to put them in different situations to see what they can do. Hopefully, we continue to improve along the way,” Davies said.

The Patriots will host back to back games on April 22 and 23. They will take on Milton Union first at 5 p.m. then then Franklin Monroe the next day at 5 p.m.

Ansonia is now 5-6 on the season with a 3-2 WOAC record. They will be at Marion Local on April 22 and at Preble Shawnee on April 23 with both games starting at 5 p.m.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected].