Newport Knights senior Conner Schilling appeared to change the momentum of a Class 4A KingCo baseball game between the Mount Si Wildcats and the Knights with one swing of the bat.
With Mount Si comfortably ahead 3-0 in the bottom of the fifth inning, Schilling connected on a two-run home-run to left field off of Mount Si pitcher Collin Anderson slicing Mount Si’s lead to 3-2. Anderson hit Newport’s Weston Miller on the ensuing at bat with just one out and looked to be on the verge of unraveling.
It never happened.
Anderson induced Newport sluggers Lukas Motta and Garrett Gants into back-to-back groundouts to end the inning, quelling the threat. Mount Si added one insurance run in the top of the sixth en route to a 4-2 win against the Knights on March 26 at Bob Albo Field in Factoria. Newport dropped to 1-3 with the loss. Wildcats head coach Zach Habben was pleased to see his ace recover from Schilling’s blast over the left field fence.
“It was a great outing by (Collin) Anderson. He came out and threw well and only had one mistake pitch and that was it,” Habben said. “It was a great game.”
Mount Si improved its overall record to 5-0 with the win.
“It is a complete turn around from last year. It is nice to come out and play well. Newport is a really good team. The guys came out today and played fundamentally sound and took advantage of what we could,” Habben said.
Newport head coach Brad Files said his youthful squad will learn from its early season struggles. Two of Newport’s losses were by two runs and one loss was by a mere one run.
“We’re a young team trying to figure it out. It was disappointing today but we will regroup, chip away and get better. We have got good leadership on this team and I’m happy with that,” Files said.
Files said its imperative his club is clicking on all cylinders in the always competitive Class 4A KingCo Conference.
“You’ll get exposed in this league if you don’t play the way you should play every time out. We got to play to a certain level and we didn’t play to Newport’s level today,” he said. “We’ll go back to the drawing board and go back to work. We’ll get there.”
