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Boardman 10-11 baseball loses in state final
NORTH CANTON
The legendary baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”
After a week in North Canton, Boardman’s Little League baseball program now knows where it’s going. Its next challenge will be getting there.
For the second time in three days, Boardman was silenced by Hamilton. Saturday afternoon’s 6-1 loss came in the 10-11 year-old state championship.
“As a league, we’ve been building our regular season, trying to make things more competitive, to get teams to be able to compete with a team like Hamilton,” said Boardman manager Jason Triveri. “We’re making strides, but obviously we’ve got a little ways to go.”
In three state tournament games against opponents other than Hamilton, Boardman scored 30 runs. In the two games against them, only one. On Saturday, Boardman managed just three hits with Marco Stilliana’s RBI double in the second inning providing their only run.
“They have great pitching, and they say great pitching beats great hitting, and it did again,” said Triveri. “We’re a pretty solid team offensively and they shut us down again.”
Jackson Lewis had the Boardman hitters on their heels the entire game with his breaking ball and painted the corners with his fastball when needed. Lewis struck out eight in the complete game win.
Michael Pastella was given the start on the mound for Boardman and kept it in the game for four-plus innings. He allowed four runs on four hits before being pulled with one out in the fifth inning because of the Little League 85-pitch limit.
“I said coming into this game you have to score seven, eight runs to win this game, because [Hamilton’s] a very good hitting team,” Triveri said. “They’re very disciplined, they’ll fight a lot of good pitches off and they’ll make the pitcher go deep into the count.”
Hamilton displayed that approach from the start, making Pastella throw 22 pitches in the top of the first inning. Carson Hanes scored on a wild pitch and Gage Dermon smacked a RBI single, scoring Bobby Young for an early 2-0 lead.
Boardman cut the deficit in half on Stilliana’s base hit the next inning, but that was as close as they would get.
Pastella did a good job getting out of trouble when Hamilton loaded the bases in the fourth inning. Maddox Pennington scored on base hit by Lewis, but was forced to go back to third after he was called for leaving the base before the ball crossed the plate. However, he scored on a wild pitch one batter later.
Everything fell apart for Boardman in the fifth inning. It walked two batters, had a throwing error that would’ve ended the inning, and a number of pitches found the backstop. Its offense didn’t have a base runner over the final two innings.
“I just told them how proud I am and how much fun we had with these kids,” said Triveri after the game. “They’re such a great group of kids. They get along great and they love being around each other.
“We’ve worked hard day in, day out and they’re just always having fun. I’m already looking forward to next year.”