By RYAN WALKER
CONVERSE — The Norwell baseball team punched its ticket to the sectional championship with a 5-1 victory over Peru behind defense and pitching Saturday afternoon.
Starter Lane Lewis went the distance, tossing seven complete innings and fooling the Tigers (14-13) for 10 punchouts and just three hits allowed.
“It felt good,” Lewis said after the game. “(My) fastball was there. Curveball didn’t feel great in warm-ups but got it figured out in the first inning and was a big part in my arsenal.”
The first three innings looked as if the Knights and Tigers were going to be in a pitcher’s duel for a while. Peru starter Logan Gatliff kept getting himself out of jams, stranding three Norwell runners in scoring position. He helped his own cause with a line drive caught on the mound off of Brody Bolyn’s bat and got a diving effort by Reis Bellow in the outfield.
Lewis, on the other hand, made quick work, striking out four of the six outs in two innings and collecting a one-two-three inning in the third. But in the fourth, the Tigers struck first on an RBI fielder’s choice from Matt Roettger. Lewis did limit the damage with a Tiger baserunner stuck at third before the final out.
Down 1-0 in the bottom of the fourth, Norwell had two outs and nobody on base. Trey Bodenheimer kept the inning alive with his second base hit of the game. Courtesy runner Collin Burns came in and reached second to set up for Luke McBride for a double hit just inches fair down the third base line to tie the game.
But Norwell wasn’t finished yet.
Graham Gaier scored McBride from second on a single, and Gary Riley scored on a wild pitch later in the inning.
Norwell head coach Dave Goodmiller attributed the fourth inning as a whole to his starting pitcher keeping the Knights in the game.
“Really, Lane started it in the first inning,” Goodmiller said. “He was real aggressive the whole game. They got a couple of hits and got their run across. I thought our kids had some really good at-bats in the first three innings, but we had some real timely hitting. Luke McBride had a great at-bat, and then he hit it down the left-field line to get the first run across. Then Graham (Gaier) got a ball through the hole and were able to get the second run in. After that, we were able to open it up a little bit.”
Lewis, after his team took the lead, breezed through the Peru order, retiring six straight and finishing the game off under 100 pitches. His offense provided him with a few insurance runs with a few Tigers’ errors.
Did Lewis settle in after his team took the lead for good in the fourth inning?
“Definitely,” he said. “The momentum that we got, it was just evident that we were not going to lose. We were not going to lose. We locked in.”
On the other side of it, the dominating performance by Lewis kept Peru from reaching base, and Goodmiller said it helped the defense stay clean on the infield. The Tigers had just five baserunners in the game.
“Defensively, we played pretty well,” he said. “When Lane’s throwing strikes like that and keeping them off stride, the infield defense stayed in the game because he’s pitching at a good pace and throwing strikes.”
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