Over the past few years, the Riverton Parke baseball team has been known to win games by playing small ball.
They did so in defeating the Mustangs of Fountain Central in the 1A Sectional #53 championship game by the score of 5-0, but not in the usual fashion.
Four times in the game, the Panthers opened an inning with a double, moved the runner over, twice on a single and twice with sacrifice bunts, and then saw the double-hitting batter go on and score.
Their other run came on a home run over the left field fence.
Asked about the use of small ball, Panther head coach Charlie Martin said, “We teach fundamentals all the time. We want to put the ball in play and make the defense stop us.”
The Mustangs played solid defense, committing only one error in an inning where no one scored, but the ability to move runners, even at the expense of an out, was the difference.
Fountain Central faced Bruce Landes on the mound and the Panther sophomore did not give up a hit until the first batter of the seventh inning.
Despite getting no hits to that point, the Mustangs did threaten in the fourth after a walk, an error and a fielder’s choice put runners on the corners, but Landes retired the next two batters to end the inning.
As has been the case all season, Fountain Central, though trailing 5-0 going into the seventh, continued to battle, with head coach Adam Acton crediting the experience of his team for that response.
Nolan Acton singled to lead off the seventh and that triggered a pitching change from Martin as he was going to let Landes remain in the contest as long as the no-hitter was intact.
“I changed [pitchers] because I didn’t want them to get anything going,” Martin explained. “You don’t want to risk things in a game like this one.”
Martin brought in Eli Roberts who had closed out the game with Covington in the semi-finals and the junior got two strikeouts and a pop up to leave Acton stranded on first when the game ended.
Coach Acton’s only comments after the game were that he was proud of his seniors – namely Nolan Acton, Wyatt Clark, Spencer Krout and Uriah Wildman – then saying he had talked about the team and the season after the win over Covington and did not have anything to add to the points he made then.
With the win, the Riverton Parke would go on to face 1A #5 Rossville in regional play where the Panthers fell by the score of 3-0 as they out hit the Hornets 6-3, but their small ball magic disappeared and they could not create any runs.