Nottingham Northstar Varsity Baseball Coach Jim Maher. Photo by Michael A. Sabo.
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Apr. 13: Jim Maher still teaches at Hamilton West, so he has a sense about the Hornets baseball team despite being Nottingham’s coach.
And he sensed a tough opponent was coming to visit on Thursday.
“I told the kids yesterday ‘Everybody’s talking about Nottingham and Steinert, I’m sure Hamilton’s gonna come in here with a little chip on their shoulder,’” Maher said. “They hit Ronnie (Voacolo) hard. Ronnie’s one of the better pitchers in the county, they put up some good at-bats against him, they had a good two-strike approach. They’re a scrappy team, they’re well coached, and they play hard.”
But according to Hornets coach Mark “Gandhi” Pienciak, they still have some things to learn. Hamilton has several seniors in the starting lineup, but they are not all experienced seniors as opposed to, say, three juniors on Nottingham who are in their third year of starting on varsity.
When a 4-0 lead turned into a 5-4 loss, Pienciak felt some of it had to do with Hamilton’s mindset. Although the Hornets allowed three runs right after scoring four, the Big G wanted his team to focus on the fact that it still led.
“We’re trying to teach our team how to keep their emotions kind of channeled,” Pienciak said. “They need to understand that at that point they still came out and were on top by a run. So you still have to regroup, and just say ‘All right, we gave them our best shot, they answered back with their’s and I felt like there was a little angst that was starting to build up after that. We’re still learning.”
One of the biggest non-plays by Hamilton came in the Northstars three-run fourth that started their comeback. With runners on the corners and none out, Nick Houghton hit a bouncer that should have been a double play, but was not executed as Houghton beat it out. Rather than two out and bases empty, it was one out and a man on first and Bryce Fremgen followed with a booming homer to cut the margin to one.
If there was a positive Hamilton could take from the game, it’s that they hit Voacolo better than most teams have in the past two years. The Hornets had eight hits over the first four innings. But their tenacity seemed to wane once Nottingham answered their rally.
“Our approach was aggressive with him and it worked out well but I felt we took our foot off the pedal a little bit,” Pienciak said. “We started getting a little passive, taking strikes, taking fastballs on those pitches that earlier on we were attacking. At the end of the game, the seniors who have been around can’t go down with the bat on their shoulder.”
Indeed, Hamilton was called out on strikes three times in the final three innings.
“At least if you put the ball in play they have to catch it and you give yourself a chance of something to happen,” Pienciak said. “The backward K kind of hurt us.”
Geiger and Meckel each finished with two hits for Hamilton, which will throw Adam Drosos against Nick Houghton in the Monday rematch at West.
