Steward falls to perennial baseball power STAB

The statement-maker came quickly and decisively.

It wasn’t that the Steward Spartans needed to be reminded, though, that their baseball counterparts from St. Anne’s-Belfield were top-to-bottom talented, quite handy with the bat, solid defensively, and on a mission that they hope will carry them deep into championship season in May.

They’d seen the scouting report. They knew the STAB players from past VISAA competition and travel ball. It was no secret, then, that they’d find little subtlety in their swing-for-the-fences offensive game, so when they took the field Thursday afternoon, they’d better be ready.

That’s easy to say, of course. 

It’s much tougher to do, especially when the Saints’ Oscar Hickey, a William & Mary commit, hammered a first-inning, lead-off home run into the woods behind the 370-foot left centerfield wall to set the tone for a 10-2 victory that improved the visitors’ record to 13-0-1.

“We have a lot of power,” said STAB coach Duke Fox. “The strength of our team is our depth. One-through-nine can hit, and we have kids on the bench who can hit.

“We’re aggressive. We hit the ball really hard as a team. We don’t play a lot of small ball. We don’t bunt very much. We take full swings. We get fastballs. We try not to miss them. We try to do damage.”

Hickey’s dinger was the first of three that the Saints from Charlottesville delivered on this warm, breezy, cloudy afternoon on the Spartans’ Family Field, a well-kept facility that honors longtime coach and athletic director Bruce Secrest.

In the fifth inning, Waylon Ammons, a University of Richmond commit, put the Saints up 6-2 when he smacked waist-high, 3-2 fastball over the left-center field wall to score Ryan Steeper, who reached base after being hit by a pitch.

An inning later, Hickey singled to left with one out, then stole second. Brooks Fox drew a walk, and Steeper, a Washington & Lee commit, cleared the bases with another shot over the left-center field wall to give the Saints, who scored in every inning, a 9-2 lead.

“All year, we’ve been battling and fighting right to the end,” said Secrest. “We know that, right off, we have to score runs to win anyway. When we see that long ball first inning, that’s just one run, and we know we’ve got to score to win anyway.

“It’s just, OK, let’s go to work with the bat, start swinging, and get some runs.”

The Spartans (5-5) did, but try as they might, they couldn’t produce enough.

Trailing 4-0 in the bottom of the fourth, though, they did give themselves a glimmer of hope.

After Carson King led off with a single to left, Ollie McGregor followed by blasting a 2-0 pitch over the left field fence.

“I saw an inside fastball coming in,” said McGregor, a senior third baseman. “That’s what I was waiting on. I took my chance and hit it.

“That definitely gave us a lot of morale. It got the dugout a lot louder.”

The Saints, a VISAA Division I signatory, scored their 10 runs on nine hits coupled with aggressive, test-the-defense-to-the-max, opportunistic base running.

Were it not for a couple of Steward defensive gems, their margin of victory would have been greater.

With one out and runners on first and second in the first, Jack Fisher laced a shot up the first base line, the Spartans’ Hunter Killian made the catch before it went into right field, possibly saving two runs, and dove back to the bag to double up Steeper who was running on the pitch.

Then in the fourth, after the Saints had extended their lead to 4-0 and loaded the bases with one out, the Spartans executed a textbook second (Brooks Johnson)-to shortstop (King)-to first (Killian) double play to end the threat.

“We take pride in our defense,” said King, a junior who’s committed to Dickinson College. “That’s our big thing. It’s probably the best part of our team as a whole. We just have to trust our guys to do their jobs.”

The VISAA Division II Spartans scratched together four hits and, save for their two-run fourth, did not advance a runner past first against three STAB pitchers.

That said, there was value in the experience.

“It was great competition,” King said. “Competition makes you better.”