BY SHANE HENNIGAN
Times-Shamrock Writer

For three innings Thursday, Blue Ridge kept Lancaster County Christian School’s lineup relatively quiet.

With wet field conditions, the Lions figured if they wanted to get their bats going, they needed to lay down some bunts.

It worked and suddenly, Blue Ridge was in too big of a hole to dig out of.

Lancaster County Christian broke a scoreless tie by sending 11 batters to the plate in the fourth inning and scoring six runs on six hits and two errors, to propel it to an 11-1 six-inning victory in a PIAA Class A baseball quarterfinal at Walter Stump Stadium.

Junior Kyle Ebersole led the way on the mound as he threw a complete game four-hitter and struck out seven for the District 3 champion Lions (21-4), who have won 11 straight and 13 of their last 14 to advance to Monday’s semifinal round against District 5 champion Southern Fulton, which defeated District 11 champion Tri-Valley, 6-0, in its quarterfinal.

“It’s pretty tough for us because we’re (mostly underclassmen),” Blue Ridge coach Billy Marvin said. “Being a young team getting down is tough.
“They fought back before but when you get down six to a team like that, it’s real tough.”

Both Ebersole and Blue Ridge starter Derek Stento kept the bats in check through the first three innings. Stento allowed just two hits, while Ebersole didn’t give up a hit until the fourth when Kalieb Scheideler singled past first baseman Cory Eavenson to give the Raiders (10-9) runners on first and second with two outs.

But Ebersole came right back with a strikeout to keep the game scoreless and set up the big inning for the Lions.

He helped his cause by drawing a leadoff walk and Jeremy Brubaker and Luke Dixon followed with consecutive perfectly-placed bunt singles in the slow infield grass to load the bases. The Lions got on the board when Stento threw a wild pitch that allowed courtesy runner Andrew Rohrbaugh to score.

Eavenson then drew another walk to reload the bases, still with no outs. Ben Glessner came up and hit a sharp grounder to third baseman Nick Folk, who fired home to catcher Tre Hillard to get the forceout.

Hillard attempted to complete the double play but Glessner beat the throw and Dixon hustled all the way from second and scored when the throw home was bobbled, giving Lancaster County Christian a 2-0 lead.

Glessner and Eavenson moved up to second and third, respectively, on the play to set the stage for Hunter Smucker, who laid down a perfect suicide squeeze to increase the lead to three.

That lead went to 4-0 when Hillard tried to pick off Glessner at third but the throw went wide and into left field.

The Lions tacked on two more courtesy of a Blake Petersheim RBI bunt-single and a single to left from Ebersole. The inning finally came to an end when Stento struck out Brubaker.

“You have to generate some runs and we knew with the conditions being a little sloppy that if we could put some good bunts down, it’s going to be really hard to play good defense on them,” Lancaster County Christian coach Chris Burns said. “It was really kind of taking advantage of the field conditions. We were willing to put bunts down and to the kids’ credit, they put them down, they put them in play and made them make plays.”

From that point, it was more than enough support for Ebersole. He struck out two batters in the fifth and the Lions gave him even more in the bottom half of the inning when Chandler Petersheim ripped a two-run triple to left field, making the score 8-0.

“We know Kyle’s going to do it so we just try to give him support as best we can,” Chandler Petersheim said.

Blue Ridge, which had eight underclassmen in its starting lineup, got on the board in the sixth thanks to a two-out, RBI single from Scheideler but that was all it could manage for the game.

Lancaster County Christian loaded the bases in the bottom half and scored on a walk, hit batter and infield single to enforce the game-ending 10-run rule.

“This was invaluable experience,” Marvin said. “These guys are going to be a lot better next year because of what we did this year.”