WINCHESTER — Prior to its home regular-season finale Monday night, the James High School baseball team honored its seven graduating seniors, and this year’s graduating class didn’t disappoint.
Three Colonels combined to throw a one-hit shutout and the seven seniors each played a part in the Colonels’ 7-0 Class 4 Northwestern District victory over Frederick County rival Millbrook at Wood’s R. Charles Hott Field.
The seniors combined for five runs, five hits and three RBIs. Senior Logan Bower threw five no-hit innings before exiting after allowing just three base runners. He walked one, hit one and struck out seven batters to earn the win.
Fellow senior Fletcher Powell gave up Millbrook’s only hit on a Dylan Reich leadoff double, but he struck out the next three hitters he faced in the sixth.
For the Colonels (14-3, 5-1 district) it was their 12th victory in their last 13 games, and their second straight since losing to Fauquier last Wednesday. Millbrook (7-8, 2-3) has lost four of its last five games, all by shutout.
“We’ve played better [since the loss to Fauquier],” Wood coach Adrian Pullen said. “Tonight, offensively we did enough and had some good team at-bats. We did some things situational with runners in scoring position that you need to do to score runs, so I was thrilled with that.
“They made a couple of errors that we took advantage of. That’s going to happen when you play young guys. They’re a young team, we’re a young team and those things are going to happen.”
Outstanding pitching from James Wood helped make Senior Night memorable. Freshman Jake Woskobunik struck out two batters in the seventh.
“Logan (Bower) pitched a great game and Fletcher and [freshman] Jake [Wokobunik] in relief did a great job as well,” he said.
Millbrook had a runner on in each of the first two innings, but both were erased on the base paths. They would only have one more runner reach against Bower the next three innings.
James Wood got the scoring started in its half of the second.
Senior Brock Whipkey (2 for 2, two runs) singled to start the inning and moved to second on a wild pitch. One out later Owen Neal (3 for 3) ripped the first of his three hits in the game to left to score Whipkey. Neal moved to second when the ball was misplayed in the outfield.
Another senior, Cade Cornwell, chopped an infield single to put runners on the corners. Courtesy runner Jake Ritter scored to make it 2-0 on Parker Kern’s sacrifice fly.
The Colonels tacked on three more in the third on just two hits.
Bower led off the inning reaching on a walk. He moved to second on a wild pitch and third on a passed ball. Tyler Prusik walked and stole second, putting two in scoring position.
One out later, Whipkey lined a single into left, scoring Bower and moving Prusik to third. After Whipkey stole second, senior, Colin Thomas made it 4-0 with an RBI groundout and Neal drove in Whipkey with his second hit to make it 5-0.
In the fourth the Pioneers got a one-out base runner when Bower hit Dylan Apfel. Bower worked around that by striking out the next two hitters and setting the Pioneers down in order in the fifth.
“We didn’t execute a couple of times,” Millbrook coach Scott Jenkins said. “We were a little over aggressive sometimes and a little under aggressive at other points. We just couldn’t execute. We had a chance to take an early lead there in the first. If we get ahead there it could be a completely different game.
“We’ve just got to figure out what our identity is and stick to that. Sometimes we’re changing depending on who we’re playing, and we can’t go on with that kind of mindset. We need to have the same bulldog mentality to go there and do what we know we can do.”
Wood’s last two seniors got into the act to help score a pair of runs in the fifth.
Senior Ethan Rettke had a pinch-hit walk to lead off the inning. Classmate Zach Woskobunik singled and moved to second on another Pioneer error. Rettke scored to make it 6-0 on Whipkey’s sacrifice fly.
With two outs Thomas singled and moved to second on an error. Neal made it 7-0 with his third hit and RBI when he doubled in Thomas to close out the scoring.
Wood outhit the Pioneers 8-1. The Pioneers only had five hitters reach base for the game, and Reich was the only one to get to third, doing so on a wild pitch.
Both teams are back in action again on Tuesday, weather permitting. Wood travels to Handley and Millbrook is at Skyline. These two teams meet again on Thursday at Millbrook.