Struthers gets good hitting, pitching in win

By Chuck Housteau

The Wildcats beat Chaney, 7-1, on Monday, and face Hubbard in an important league game today.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Struthers High baseball team has an important All-American Conference game today against Hubbard that could go a long way in determining the White Tier championship.

Struthers’ coach Mike Donatelli’s fears that his team might overlook Chaney at Shuba Field on Monday were unfounded as the Wildcats (11-5) got some timely hitting a strong pitching performance from freshman Roman Salinas to beat the Cowboys 7-1.

“We were coming off a long weekend and anytime you go on the road in unfamiliar surroundings you wonder how your team is going to respond,” said Donatelli. “We’ve done a good job all year of playing together as a team so I knew that we would come to play.”

The Wildcats and Hubbard are both 5-1 in league play.

“It’s a big game for us,” Donatelli said. “There aren’t too many games this year that we haven’t played well so I expect us to be ready against Hubbard.”

Senior catcher Dom Lariccia, who had two singles, scored a run and drove in another, said there was not any letdown against Chaney despite a big game on the horizon.

“We play one game at a time so I knew we would be ready today,” Lariccia said. “We wanted to go into [the Hubbard] game with a win tonight.”

Struthers pounded out 10 hits and scored in five of the seven innings against a Chaney team that has struggled this season.

“We’re playing better baseball lately,” said Chaney coach Tony Gorvet. “We’re overmatched and undermanned in most games. We only have 12 players.

“We need to get more players to come out and play.”

Chaney (4-14) stayed with the Wildcats early and trailed just 3-1 after five innings.

“We didn’t have many opportunities to score many runs,” Gorvet said. “We pitched a pretty good game but we didn’t hit the ball when we had to.”

Struthers got a nice effort on the mound from Salinas (2-0), who allowed only five hits and struck out four batters in six innings. Brian Palmer finished up by pitching a solid seventh inning for the Wildcats.

Offensively, Struthers was led by freshman Dylan Duchek who had three hits, including a long home run over the left field fence. Duchek had two RBIs and scored two runs.

“We’ve been averaging about nine or 10 runs a game,” said Donatelli. “We hit the ball well tonight. When we get solid pitching like tonight and play good defense we give ourselves a chance to win every night.”

Struthers put the game away by scoring two runs in the sixth and two more in the seventh inning.

In the sixth, Duchek came around to score on a wild pitch after reaching on a fielder’s choice and moving to third on a double by Joe Balog. Balog later scored on an RBI single by Lariccia.

In the seventh, Jake Thomas led off with a walk and scored on an RBI single by Duchek. Joe DiLoretto also scored on an RBI by Steve Wilaj.