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By DEAN JACKSON
WZBD.com
UNIONDALE — There are opportunities you create and opportunities that come your way.
Norwell had both Saturday as they advanced to the IHSAA baseball Class 3A Sectional Championship, topping Bellmont 7-3.
“That’s what we’ve preached all year. That’s what we’ve played all year,” Norwell Coach Christian Bohata explained. “Any opportunity we get to move a guy over, we are going to do that and try to set ourselves up to be in the best position possible.”
Bellmont coach Aaron Baker said, “They were very, very aggressive on the bases. They took any advantage that they could take – toss in a couple of miscues on our part—if we kept our errors down, we might have caught up with them, but that is not how it went today.”
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The Knights face Mississinewa (17–5) Monday at Norwell. The Indians ousted Maconaquah 2-0 in the semi-final game. The first pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Bellmont (9-15) was led by Gavin Krull, who finished 1-for-2 with a home run and 2 RBI. Andrew James was 2-for-3 with a run scored. Dylan Velaz was 1-for-3 with a run scored. Beau Baker was 1-for-3 with an RBI.
Aidan Zimmerman was tagged with the loss. He worked five innings, allowing six hits and seven runs—just two were earned. Layne LeMaster allowed one hit in one inning of work in the bottom of the sixth.
Baker said he was proud of his squad’s attitude. “It’s not a seven-inning game – It’s seven one-inning games,” he said. “We continued to battle in each of those innings, unfortunately, we came up on the short end there. They won more innings than we did. But we didn’t give up. Our kids did not give up.”
Norwell (18-7) delivered offensively, defensively, and on the mound. Cade Shelton struck out 17 batters, allowing five hits and giving up three runs—all earned. Drew Graft finished the day 1-for-3 with three RBI. Korben Neuenschwander was 2-for-3 with two RBI.
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The win is the fourth straight for the Knights who needed extra innings to get past Peru in the opening round Wednesday.
The Knights wasted no time manufacturing a pair of runs in the first and second innings to go up 2-0.
Bellmont cut it to 2-1. In the top of the fourth, James singled to right field; two batters later, he advanced to third on a walk and scored on a single to center by Beau Baker.
Krull gave Bellmont a brief lead in the top of the fifth inning. He blasted a 325-foot shot to right field to score Velez.
“Gavin has been coming around, just hitting the ball solidly. He drove it, he got outside and poked it.”
Norwell re-captured momentum in the bottom of the fifth, plating two runs on a double by Drew Graft, scoring courtesy runner William Case, Garry Riley and Noah Schamerloh. That gave Norwell a 5-3 lead.
Again, the Knights built the opportunity with a Neuenschwander single, followed by a Riley walk. Zimmerman reached on a would-be sacrifice bunt to fill the bases.
“When you are given an opportunity like a bases-loaded situation you dig in. When you have your best hitter up, you’re not nervous at all. There’s no better spot to be.”
The Knights scored two more in the bottom of the sixth to put the game out of reach. Bohata says his squad knows what their job is.
“They know the standard, we set back in the winter. I have told them this in our past two games, ‘If we play our game, we’re hard to beat.’ That is what we have done.”