STEPHENS CITY — A lights-out performance from pitcher Aaron DeHaven propelled Sherando to a win over visiting James Wood on Thursday, evening the season series.
After falling 4-1 on opening day, the Warriors won by the same margin this time around, improving to 9-5. James Wood fell to 8-4.
DeHaven finished with five strikeouts, three hits allowed and an unearned run in seven innings, throwing 60 strikes across 90 pitches. He and the Warriors’ defense sent the Colonels down 1-2-3 in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings.
DeHaven said he was finding success with various pitches against the Colonels, while Sherando head coach Craig Bodenschatz said DeHaven is a competitor who the Warriors count on tremendously.
“I could just rely on my fastball. I could throw it and they weren't hitting it,” DeHaven said. “And if I needed to, I can go to the change up or sweeper, and they couldn’t hit that either. So I just had confidence on my pitches.”
“Before the game, he had that look, and I had a good feeling,” Bodenschatz said. “He wants the ball in the big game. And that's all you can ask for, as a coach, from a pitcher. It was a three-game week, we were a little thin on pitching. We knew that we had to be efficient. I talked with him before the game about that, and he took it to heart.”
DeHaven also played a key role in Sherando’s offensive success, hitting a two-RBI single in a three-run second inning where six Warriors got on base.
Before DeHaven’s hit, Landon Demko hit an RBI single with bases loaded to score Braylon Clark, making it 2-1. After Asher Morrow walked to load the bases again, DeHaven hit a hard ground ball past the mound and out to center field, scoring Zac Thomas and Demko.
DeHaven said the Warriors’ offense worked some good counts throughout the inning, and that he was waiting for Colonels’ pitcher Jake Woskobunik, who also pitched a complete game, to give him something he knew he could hit.
“I knew he was [throwing] heavy, breaking ball stuff,” DeHaven said. “So I just was waiting for a fastball to come, and I got it and I just poked up the middle.”
While the Warriors found success early, they joined James Wood in struggling to produce offensively down the stretch. The Colonels finished the game 3-25 at the plate, while the Warriors batted 5-22.
Woskobunik went six innings and struck out five batters while walking two and giving up five hits and three earned runs.
He gave up no hits and one walk after the second and finished with 52 strikes on 84 pitches. Colonels head coach Adrian Pullen said Woskobunik got better as the game progressed, and "put us in a position to win tonight.”
James Wood opened the game going up 1-0 after Parker Kerns hit an RBI double to score Tyler Prusik, thanks in part to a delayed throw in right field. The Warriors tied things up in the bottom of the first on a similar play when Demko hit an RBI single to score Nick Usa after an error at shortstop. Sherando left two runners stranded to end the first.
The Colonels committed two of their three errors in the first, while the Warriors tallied an error and made the mistake in right in the inning. Pullen said his team needs to “clean that up,” while Bodenschatz attributed the early-game miscues to the familiarity between the two sides.
“There’s a lot of emotion in a game like this,” Bodenschatz said. “These guys know each other, they grew up playing against each other, being on the same team, and some of them play on the same teams in the summertime. We had some jitters, we shook those off and we were able to respond and get a couple runs. And I think once we got that lead, we were able to take a breath and say, ‘alright, we're settled into the game.’ And that's what it takes.”
Beginning with the final two outs of the first inning, Sherando retired 16 straight batters until Prusik reached on a two-out, sixth-inning bunt. Pinch hitter Lane Herring hit a single in the seventh for James Wood’s final hit.
“We’ve got to be more disciplined at the plate, especially against good teams like Sherando,” Pullen said.
Following this win, Sherando will visit Kettle Run on Tuesday at six, while James Wood will travel to Dominion for a 6:30 game on Monday. Heading into the contest versus the Cougars, Bodenschatz said he was encouraged by his team's early-game offensive production against James Wood.
“Our approach is to try to work the middle of the field, and I think every one of our hits today was either middle or back side,” Bodenschatz said. “That's how we win. When we get pull-happy, we lose. That's when we hit ground balls to short, ground balls to third. And tonight, we did a better job than we've done the last couple of games of staying in the middle of the field and using the back side. I think the more that we see the success doing that, the better off we're going to be in the long run.”
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