Baseball: Gaithersburg 12, Churchill 4

By Kyle Wannen
For DigitalSports.com

With his team trailing Churchill 4-0 after two innings Tuesday, Gaithersburg coach Jeff Rabberman was not pleased with his team's performance and he let them know it needed to change in between innings.

"We didn't come out to play today," Rabberman said. "For whatever reason we did not show up the first two innnings. I came in and said, 'Listen, the coaches can do nothing for you, you're in a 4-0 hole. We're lucky enough to have five innings left, it's got to come form you guys,' and they responded right away. I'm real proud of the way they responded.

The Trojans responded by batting around in the third inning and scoring seven runs. Afterwards they continued to build upon that lead as they defeated the Bulldogs, 12-4.

"He's a really intense guy and gets us all intense in the dugout," senior captain and second baseman Kory Smigocki said.

"Coach just got us pumped up at the beginning of the inning," pitcher Nick Riley said. "Once Robbie [Shanley] got hit by the pitch that just started it all off."

After Shanley was plunked, Gaithersburg (2-2) quickly loaded the bases and scored their first run when center fielder Billy Cullen was also plunked. Riley followed that up with a two-run single to right field. Two batters later third baseman Graham Hartung hit his own two-run single and later scored stealing home.

Throughout the game the Trojans were paced by Smigocki, who finished the game a perfect 5-5 at the plate with four singles and a double. Despite struggling so far in the season, Smigocki excelled against Churchill and also scored three run and had two RBIs.

"Things weren't really going my way swinging the bat in the first couple game so I just had to come in with a different mindset and just put the bat on the ball," Smigocki said.

"Today he just came out ready to go," Rabberman said. "He's our senior leader and he's a captain. That's the way he should respond. He's just got to keep it going because we need him at the top part of the lineup to keep producing for us."

In addition to his clutch hit in the crucial third inning, Riley also threw for six innings while giving up four runs on four hits and striking out three while walking four. However he kept Churchill (2-2) off the scoreboard after the second inning before being relieved by Cullen in the seventh.

"[The third inning] really helped me out a lot, got me settled down so I could throw my pitches and get outs," Riley said. "I just fixed my mechanics and just tried to throw strikes."

"He didn't have his best stuff today but he bared down and got through it," Rabberman said. "Once we got the lead we could really be aggressive with our pitch calling."

In the sixth inning, Cullen blasted an inside fastball deep to left and over Churchill's high fence for a home run which drove in Smigocki and extended Gaithersburg lead to a comfortable 10-4 margin.

"I didn't really think about hitting a home run but it just went," Cullen said.

The Bulldogs started off the game well with two runs in each of the first two innings. Second baseman William Johnson hit a two-run single in the first and aggressive baserunning helped Churchill score twice in the second.

"The first couple of innings we were hitting really well and had a lot of smart plays on the infield," Churchill coach Wes Russ said. "Our pitcher started struggling, we had a couple errors on the infield and they got hot with the bats. Then their pitcher just did a great job and closed us down the rest of the game."