Baseball: Avon Lake returns home to dominate Elyria

AVON LAKE — Welcome home, Shoremen. Avon Lake traveled to South Carolina last week and lost all four games, with three of them coming against defending state champions. But they were back in their city Monday, posting a dominating 17-1 Southwestern Conference win over Elyria to improve to 2-4 and 2-0 in the conference. "A lot of teams went down south looking to play winnable games. We wanted to play good competition," Shoremen coach Kevin Collins said. "We wanted to see where we were at, but we hung with most of the teams but just couldn't finish. I think we learned from those games, and you saw that today. We forced the issue and came up with some big hits." The Pioneers (1-5, 0-4) were their own worst enemy in the first inning, committing three of their five errors to allow three runs. Josh Bobrowski reached on an error, stole two bases and scored on a throwing error on the second steal. Chase Cartwright walked and scored on a Cole Hahn hit after two stolen bases, and Hahn came home on the third error of the inning. "It was pretty much over after that first inning," Elyria coach Jordan Connell said. "Our pitcher (JJ Buckey) was out there dealing. He gave us a chance to get out of the inning unscathed and they scored three runs. From there, our heads were down, blaming each other, and you can't come back from that." Avon Lake starter Bailey Thibeault stayed untouched through his four innings, walking a pair and allowing just a hit, a double by Cody Stipe with one out in the fourth. By the time the Pioneers got that hit, they were down 6-0, as Jacob Perry drove in a run with a hit, Bobrowski had a sacrifice fly and Alex Hicov's single through the middle scored the third run. The Shoremen broke out the big bats in their half of the fourth, scoring 11 times on eight hits, with Chase Hamilton picking up two of the hits and driving in five, including a bases-loaded double in his second at-bat. "I think we learned about ourselves in South Carolina and definitely competed, even though we didn't pick up a win," Hamilton said. "We knew we needed to get on (Elyria) early and we were able to do that today, and it worked out great." Owen Bellamy and Jacob Perry also had run-scoring hits in the fourth to go along with three runs coming home on wild pitches. Elyria scored its run in the fifth, as Landon Wissinger singled off Max Prohaska. Steven Hernandez-Natal walked and Rocco Schneider was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Mason Burnette plated the run when he was hit by a pitch.