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Baseball: Sunlake Beats Pasco At Own Game

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By RICK HARMON

Tribune correspondent

Published: April 17, 2009

Before Thursday night, Pasco had hit 32 home runs. Sunlake had only 2.

But the Seahawks hit back-to-back home runs in the top of the fifth inning en route to a 9-7 Class 4A-District 8 win at Pasco and put the Pirates in a must-win situation Friday against Zephyrhills.

Pasco, Zephyrhills and Springstead are 11-4 in 4A-8 play. Springstead plays Hernando on Friday. All three teams split the regular-season meetings so a series of tie-breakers will be used to determine the regular-season champion and No. 1 seed for the tournament, which begins April 27 at Zephyrhills.

Sunlake (10-5) will join the loser of the Pasco-Zephyrhills game and Nature Coast in a similar tie-breaker for second place. If Springstead loses to Hernando, the winner of the Pasco-Zephyrhills game gets the No. 1 seed and would join Sunlake, Nature Coast and the loser of the Zephyrhills-Pasco game in a wild tie-breaker for the No. 2 seed. Sunlake finishes district play Friday at Hudson (3-20, 3-12 4A-8).

Sunlake's Ray Clark kept the big Pasco bats at bay for most of the game, with the exception of the third inning. Clark (3-0) gave up four singles and the Seahawks committed one of their five errors as the Pirates took a 4-0 lead.

But Sunlake came back to score two in the fourth inning when Joe Connolly walked to start the inning and moved to second on a wild pitch. Two outs later, Connor Coplon doubled to score Connolly and scored himself on a single by Justin Ellis.

In the fifth inning, Joe Mantenga led off the inning with a walk and was moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Clark. Leadoff hitter Eric Price sent a Matt Gude pitch over the right-center field fence to tie the score at 4 and Connolly followed with home run to left to give the Seahawks a 5-4 lead.

"Those home runs were line drives," said Sunlake coach Dick Rohrberg. "It wasn't like the just hit it in the air. The kids did a great job. We had that one bad inning where we made some errors again."

The Seahawks followed by scoring four more in the sixth on two singles, a walk, a hit-by-pitch and a Pasco error.

In the bottom of the seventh, Jacob Schrader led off the inning with his county-leading ninth home run
of the season. Jorge Jaramillo followed with a single and Rohrberg brought Coplon in to relieve Clark. Coplon got the next two batters out and struck out Sage Stephens but he reached first when the pitch went to the backstop. Trejon Smith reached on an error and Trey Dudley-Giles walked to load the bases.

But Coplon got Josh Johnson to strike out to end the game with the bases full of Pirates.

Sunlake 000 234 0 — 9 8 5
Pasco 004 001 2 — 7 9 1

W — Clark (3-0). L — M. Gude (3-1). Sv — Coplon (1). 2B — Coplon (S). HR — Price, Connolly (S); Schrader (P). Records — S 11-10, P 15-6.

Correspondent Rick Harmon can be reached at tampabaystringer@gmail.com.

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