By Jimmy Thomas
Content Editor, DigitalSports.com
Locked in a three-way tie with South County atop of the Patriot District standings, West Springfield and Lake Braddock squared off Wednesday night to kick off the second half of district play.
And it took the Bruins, winners of seven straight, just a couple of hours to avenge their only district loss of the season as they defeated the visiting Spartans, 4-2, at home.
Lake Braddock Coach Jody Rutherford sent junior lefty Brian Derner to the hill and got exactly what he had hoped for. Derner relied on his defense all night, going 6 and 2/3 innings while scattering five hits only allowing 2 runs. Sophomore Ryan Lindemuth recorded the games’ final out.
“Brian has been huge,” Rutherford said. “He has beaten some really good teams. He has done an excellent job of keeping us in ballgames. We played played great defense behind him today and scored some runs off of a good pitcher.”
West Springfield got the scoring started in the top half of the second inning when sophomore catcher Charlie Morgan singled and was moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by senior Tim Baldwin. The Spartans next batter, Mike Kent, singled to left/center field to score Morgan and give the Spartans an early, one-run lead.
But the Bruins rallied, getting an unearned run in the second and fifth innings to take a 2-1 lead entering the bottom half of the sixth. With one out and Lake Braddock senior Ryan Buckrop on first base after a single, freshman Kenny Towns stepped to the plate looking to add an insurance run for his team. He did just that, driving the third pitch over the 360 sign in dead center field for his second home run of the season.
After a couple of walks the Spartans got on the board again in the seventh on another RBI single by Kent, but proved unable to mount anything else.
Lake Braddock has a tough road ahead, traveling to face T.C. Williams Thursday night in a make-up game and will then host South County on Friday.
“I told our guys that they have until they are finished raking the field to enjoy this and then we are going to focus on facing T.C. Williams,” Rutherford said. “Our goal is to treat this like it’s a tournament week. We are going to see some pretty good competition, we need to forget about what happened and move on to the next game.”
Email: jthomas@digitalsports.com
R H E
Lake Braddock 4 7 1
West Springfield 2 5 2
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