ALLEGANY, N.Y — After three weeks of rain, snow and unplayable baseball, both coaches at Stayer Field were just happy they could play a game under sunny conditions.

As an added bonus, Allegany-Limestone and Otto-Eldred each played great games. A back-and-forth tilt saw plenty of offense before the Gators pulled away with quality pitching late to win its opener 8-7 on Friday.

“I came over to the field at noon today on my lunch break just to make sure we were good to go,” Allegany-Limestone head coach Eric Hemphill said. “Thankfully we had somebody who came in really early to take care of the field and make sure it was in good shape.”

Even with the quality field conditions, it was the first game of the season for the Gators, and the jitters were out in full force early. Otto (0-2) put up a four-spot in the top of the third, with two of those runs coming on a bunt attempt that ended up getting tossed to the backstop.

At the end of three innings, Otto had a 5-1 lead.

“I told my assistant early on, ‘You can tell right now that they’ve played one game on the field and we haven’t played any,” Hemphill said. “Our first time through the order we struggled, and then we started to barrel-up on some balls and were able to steal some bases to put ourselves in good spots.”

But, Allegany-Limestone has six returning seniors from a team that went deep in the playoffs last year, and it was only a matter of time before they showed up. The Gators’ aggressive approach the second time through the order paid immediate dividends, as Allegany brought eight men to the plate in the fourth inning, and put up four runs to tie the game.

Otto, which has a league game this afternoon, had to carefully juggle its pitchers. Head coach Jame Thomas left starter Chase Sebastian in the game for only an inning, and ultimately used four pitchers  — with limited pitch counts — in the game.

“That was exactly the case before (today’s) game with Coudersport,” Thomas said. “I thought most of them threw pretty well. Allegany is a good hitting team. If you’re not spot-on, you can get hit. I’m pleased with the way we played and I think our pitchers can go into tomorrow’s game pretty confident and play well.”

The Terrors did jump back ahead in the fifth, but Allegany took the lead for good in the bottom half of that frame. Grant Davis and Tommy Moran hit back-to-back RBI doubles to give the Gators an 8-6 advantage.

Despite all the offense and 19 combined hits, the most valuable player of the game turned out to be a pitcher.

“I can’t say enough about Travis Maguire who came in there and shut the door,” Hemphill said.

Hemphill brought his junior reliever in the sixth inning with his team up by two. Maguire gave up a run in that frame, but really went to work in the seventh. He allowed Otto’s first two hitters of the inning to reach, but got a strikeout, and then a double play, to secure Allegany’s first win of the season.

That strikeout came against Otto cleanup hitter Chase Sebastian, who already had two RBI and two extra-base hits on the day.

“Well, of course we didn’t want to see their four-hitter up with runners on,” Hemphill said. “(Maguire) throws a pretty nice curveball and our other picther hadn’t thrown one all game. So we figured we had to throw him a couple and we got him out with one. Then, you couldn’t ask for a more tailor-made double play with our two sophomores rolling it up the middle.”

Otto went 0-for-2 in its games against New York schools this week, also dropping Wednesday’s contest against Bolivar-Richburg. Despite the start, Thomas likes what he’s seen from a team that has plenty of underclassmen playing critical roles.

“We had a lot of positives things out there,” he said. “We had a few things we have to work on but I was impressed with how we played coming off that loss in Bolivar. We had one really bad inning and that set us back in that one. This game, the boys came out and battled every inning. Have to give it to Allegany-Limestone, they scraped and came back. Unfortunately somebody has to lose this one.”

AT ALLEGANY, N.Y.

             R H E

Otto-Eldred               014 010 1 7 10 1

Allegany-Limestone  010 421 X 8 9 1

Chase Sebastian (2 SO, 1 BB), Sawyer Drummond (2) (1 SO, 1 BB), Andrew Sheeler (3) (1 BB), Cole Sebastian (5) (1 SO, 2 BB) and Jacob Merry

Jerahmy Flick (2 SO 3 BB), Travis Maguire (6) (3 SO, 1 BB), and Collin Strade