Westfield’s eight uncharacteristic errors doom district opener in 14-3 loss to Calvary Christian

PERRY — As Westfield head coach Ryan Wetherington said after Tuesday’s region opener, defense is something the Hornets pride themselves on.

Unfortunately for Westfield (6-4, 0-1 GIAA District 5-4A/3A) error after error piled up in the third inning as Calvary Christian (3-7, 1-0 District) scored 10 runs to seal their 14-3 win in the district opener.

“I thought the other four innings we played decent defense, not our best. That one inning is what killed us,” Wetherington said. “I think they had two balls that were hit out of the infield that inning [when they] scored 10 runs. I don’t know if it was lack of mental focus…but we pride ourselves in good defense and obviously that didn’t happen tonight.”

“Our pitcher’s up there battling, doing everything they can and we let him down…We’re going to rebound. We’ll get back after it again tomorrow at practice and hopefully go in Thursday with a better outcome.”

This was the Hornets’ fourth game with multiple errors, but eight was by far the highest total this season.

The infield had trouble fielding ground balls and a pair of hit-by-pitches didn’t help. The Knights scored their 10th run after a diving outfielder couldn’t come up with the ball, clearing the loaded bases and giving Calvary Christian a seven-run margin.

After getting the final strikeout, Westfield lined out and struck out twice in four at-bats; Brock Johnson popped up but got on because the shortstop dropped it.

The miserable inning seemed to go as quickly as it came. The offense didn’t find their first-inning juice again, but the very next inning the Hornets made defensive plays they hadn’t just three outs ago.

Two infield grounders resulted in outs and Carter Black picked off the sole runner to quickly dampen the Knights’ offense.

But that ended up being the difference.

Westfield followed a rough defensive top of the first inning by scoring all three of their runs. Brooks Bentley and Win Hoots drew a hit-by-pitch and a walk respectively for Brock Johnson, who knocked a single into left field to put the Hornets up 2-1 after a wild pitch scored Bentley. Matt Molina’s sacrifice fly scored the third and final run, but after that they couldn’t capture that same production.

“[Colton Silvestri] did a good job at keeping the ball down in the zone, and I’m not sure exactly what pitch it was, some type of off-speed pitch that we kept chasing out of the zone,” Wetherington said. “We didn’t make a good adjustment on that pitch, and when we did hit it [we got] weak contact fly outs here or there. Just got to do a better job of stringing some things together.”

One positive, despite a short 2.2 innings on the mound, was Cooper Kennedy’s competitiveness.

The first inning wasn’t easy and Kennedy came off of the mound frustrated. But when he returned in the second he earned three strikeouts in five at-bats. He only allowed one earned run in his time.

At one point the freshman drew his defense in for a mound visit, a testament to his efforts at being a leader regardless of his age and varsity experience.

“Cooper has done great for us all year, and he did it again [tonight], pounding the zone. He’s just a freshman and goes out there and is a leader, tries to lead and do what he can,” Wetherington said. “It’s easy in a situation like that, when your defense isn’t behind you, they’re constantly making mistakes, runs are scoring on you, to get a bad attitude or show yourself. He didn’t. He stayed composed, tried to keep pounding the zone and tried to get us out of it…I was proud of how he pitched today and I thought he did a good job.”

UP NEXT

Westfield will get back at it in the doubleheader at Calvary Christian on March 19 at 5 p.m.