On a brutally cold night for baseball, New Hope High School remained hot Tuesday night.
The Trojans needed a brisk two hours to polish off rival West Point 10-0 in a five-inning Class 5A, Region 2 baseball game played at Trojan Field.
With the victory, New Hope improved to 10-2 overall and 2-0 in region play. This is a critical week for New Hope which plays two more region games – tonight at Oxford and a Friday night rematch at West Point.
“This is a really big week, this is where championships are won,” New Hope senior right fielder Trae Collins said.”We have to keep taking care of business. Oxford is an arch-rival of ours, so we really want the sweep. We will have to go up there and keep working hard.”
New Hope worked hard Tuesday night.
The Trojans set the tone early with four runs in the first inning. As he almost always does, junior shortstop Will Golsan started the big inning, this time with an outfield-misplayed double. Golsan was on his way to a second straight 4-for-4 night at the plate.
In last Tuesday’s region win over Oxford, Golsan had four of his team’s eight hits. Tuesday night against West Point, Golsan had four of his team’s 11 hits.
“Will is really a great player,” Collins said. “Even though he is a junior, he is our team leader. We all look up to him. He sets the tone offensively. He always gets on base and gets that us going.”
The Trojans ran the lead to 7-0 an inning later when the Green Wave threw the ball around and committed three errors.
West Point was also watching the injury count mount. Third baseman Bradley Ewings was banged up sliding back into the first base bag in the first inning. Ewings stayed in the game but had to hobble to his position each half inning. First baseman Freddie Reed left the game in the second inning after being hit in the mouth by an errant pickoff throw.
“West Point has a good team, so it was great to get the early lead,” New Hope coach Lee Boyd said. “The weather has really put us in a predicament. We have three region games this week and two more games Saturday. It was good to be able to rest some starters. It was also good to rest some arms.”
The pitching trio of Landon Boyd, Golsan and sophomore Josh Stillman combined on a two-hitter on the mound.
“Josh is only a 10th-grader, but he is going to be really good for us,” Lee Boyd said. “We have gotten him more innings as the season has gone along. We really feel like we have the type of pitching depth to play a week of games like this.”
The Trojans also turned in another errorless night, again sparked by the middle infield play of Golsan and Parker Earhart, as well as third baseman JC Redden.
“We try to make all of the plays,” Collins said. “A lot of high school teams aren’t this good on defense. They will boot some balls and make some mistakes. In practice, the coaches make us do either 10 or 20 push-ups, if we make an error.
“Baseball players do not like to do push-ups.”
It is that attention to detail that New Hope hopes can lead to a state championship. A season ago, the Trojans lost in the north state championship series. The near-miss has served as motivation for this season.
“We have a lot of really good players on this team,” Collins said. “(Last season) has just made us work a lot harder in practice. We know we should have gone farther. Our goal this year is to make it to the big dance.”
Taylor Stafford and Collins also had multiple hits for New Hope.
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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