Errors Prove Costly for Eagles in State Tournament Loss
SHEFFIELD, Mass. – The West Boylston baseball team Thursday scored 13 unearned runs, including five in the top of the eighth inning, to earn a 13-8 win over Mount Everett in the Division 5 State Tournament Round of 16.
Brady Carpenter went 2-for-4 with a solo home run for the Eagles, who rallied from deficits of 2-0 and 7-5 but gave up an 8-7 lead in the top of the seventh.
Ten Mount Everett errors dug too deep of a hole for the Eagles’ offense to climb out of.
“Throughout the season, other teams made mistakes and we took advantage of those,” Mount Everett coach Brian Wade said. “Today, we made a lot of mistakes, and they took advantage of them. Just too much for us to come back from.
“After we took the lead in the bottom of the sixth, I’m pretty sure we had five of those errors from the seventh inning on. You just can’t win a baseball game like that.”
Tenth-seeded West Boylston (19-3) scored a run in each of the first two innings to go on top early, but the Eagles rallied for four in the bottom of the fourth to take their first lead.
Trevor Leonard and Cameron Coon each had a one-out single to start the inning, and Gavin Snyder and Landon Havens each drove in a run with a sacrifice bunt ahead of Johnny Ireland’s two-run single to make it 4-2.
In the fifth, Carpenter led off with a bomb to center field to give his team a three-run lead.
But The Lions hung five runs on the board with just two hits in the sixth to regain the lead, 7-5.
The Eagles immediately answered in the bottom of the frame. Brody Kinna had the big blow, a two-run double. He moved up on a fly ball to the outfield and stole home to put the Eagles on top, 8-7.
Carpenter, who took the mound in the sixth in relief of starter Kinna, got the first two outs of the seventh on strikeouts. But an outfield error put a West Boylston runner on second with two out, and he came home on Anthony Scola’s RBI single to tie it, 8-8.
The Eagles went down, 1-2-3, in the bottom of the seventh against Lions reliever Dominick Renzoni, and the West Boylston offense rallied with one out, helped by two Mount Everett errors and two two-run singles from Scola and Tommy Wyatt, to go ahead for good.
Ireland drew a one-out walk in the bottom of the seventh for the Eagles, but they could not advance him.
Mount Everett finishes the season with a record of 18-3.
“This group is always going to be special to me,” Wade said. “This is my first year as a varsity head coach. I got to work with some of these guys when they were younger, so, to see them leaving is tough. But I wish them all the best of luck.
“There are things to be proud of. An undefeated league championship. Eighteen wins, which I was told is the most in school history in a season. There are things this team needs to be proud of that they accomplished on this field.”