DUBOIS — Three hits usually won’t be enough to win you many baseball games.
But that didn’t seem to bother the Clarion Bobcats on Thursday, as they topped the Elk Catholic Crusaders 3-0 in the PIAA Class A quarterfinals at Showers Field in DuBois.
Despite notching three lonely singles, Clarion proved to have enough offense to support starting pitcher Reed Anthony, who pitched seven masterful innings.
The stocky lefthander surrendered just three hits and one walk while striking out seven Crusader batters.
“If you don’t score, you don’t win,” ECC coach Father Eric Vogt simply said afterwards. “We’ve gotta score.”
The Crusaders had an opportunity in the second inning to get some runs on the board. Eric Gerber and Gabe Kraus got the inning started with a pair of singles. A sacrifice bunt by Nate DaCanal moved both runners into scoring position with only one away.
But Anthony was able to work out of the jam by first inducing a harmless popup to second base and then setting down his opposite number Alec Wehler on strikes.
Wehler himself had a great start to the game on the mound for ECC, retiring the first six batters he faced.
But the Bobcats would eventually get the bats going in the bottom of the third with a three-run inning. It wasn’t exactly pretty: the frame started with a walk, a sacrifice, and a hit by pitch. But when Spencer Miller’s sacrifice fly to left field drove in the game’s first run, Clarion was hardly complaining.
Shortly thereafter, Reed’s brother Ryan notched an RBI single to make it 2-0. The lead soon became three with another RBI single, this one coming courtesy of Sterling Conner.
That would be it as far as offense was concerned for the rest of the game for both sides.
Starting at the end of the second inning, Anthony would set down ten consecutive batters in a row. When all was said and done, the Clarion starter faced a total of 24 batters, just three more than the minimum.
ECC would get one more decent chance to get on the board in the top of the sixth inning, getting a runner on first with one out. But Anthony would once again prove able to the challenge, as the Bobcats promptly turned a beautiful 6-4-3 double play.
Wehler would notch the third of ECC’s three base hits. On the mound, he would finish with two strikeouts, three walks, and three hits allowed in five innings of work.
On most nights, that would prove to be good enough to get the ‘W’. But in the end, the Crusaders simply couldn’t get the bats going when they needed to.
It was an undeniably disappointing end to the season for coach Vogt and his large group of seniors.
“I want to thank my 11 seniors,” he said. “Some of them have been with me for four years, some of them three years. We had a good run.”
Clarion will be back in action on Monday in the state semifinals at a site and time to be determined.
At DUBOIS
R H E
Elk Catholic 000 000 0 0 3 1
Clarion 003 000 X 3 3 1
Alec Wehler (2 SO, 3 BB), Dan Stauffer (6) (1 SO, 1 BB), and Stauffer
Reed Anthony (7 SO, 1 BB), and Kyle Patterson
