LEWISTON — Oak Hill faced two opponents — Spruce Mountain and the elements — in Thursday night’s postseason baseball game.
Despite a chilly downpour, third-ranked Oak Hill put together a four-run, second-inning and mopped up 11th-seeded Spruce Mountain with a 9-3 victory in a Class C South quarterfinal at Lewiston High School.
Oak Hill (14-3) goes on to face second-seeded and Monmouth Academy (16-1) on Saturday in Monmouth.
“I think we as a team did a great job not letting the conditions get to us,” Oak Hill coach Chad Stowell said. “I was hearing guys in the dugout say: ‘We are not going to let the rain bother us. We are just going to play baseball.’ We knew it was finally going to get to this point. We knew as long as we kept that focus that we were going to be OK.
“We’ve been talking about that all week long, and these guys showed tremendous mental focus to not let (that bother them). Nobody could hold on to the ball; nobody could hold on to the bat.”
The Raiders didn’t let even a 20-minute rain delay in the second inning put a damper on their playoff run.
The game was tied at 1-1 going into the bottom of the second inning when Oak Hill opened up on the Phoenix (7-11) with four well-placed hits and some solid base running.
Zack Bean singled and moved to third base when Ethan Vattaso and Kyle Delano both walked. Bean came home on Trent Drouin’s RBI sac fly to center field. Vattaso and Delano then scored on catcher Grayson Letourneau’s two-run single. Cooper Spencer also singled in a run to give the Raiders a 5-1 lead.
“We played really hard,” Letourneau said. “We’ve been talking about this moment all the time — just have focus in the dugout, be tough on the field. We accomplished that. We didn’t let the rain bother us at all. I mean, we really just played our hearts out.”
Vattaso made it a 6-1 game in the third inning after he got on due to an error and moved to third on a passed ball. He then scored on another passed ball.
The Raiders jumped ahead 8-2 when Landen Dennis ripped a two-run single in the fifth, scoring Vattaso and Trent Drouin, who reached on a fielder’s choice and error, respectively. Oak Hill topped off its victory with another run in the sixth inning. Cooper Spence got on after a dropped pitch, stole second and scored on Bean’s flyout to left field.
Drouin got the win on the mound, coming in relieve for Delano in the top of the third inning. Dennis took over on the mound in the top of the sixth to close out the Phoenix. Griffin Achhorn took the loss for Spruce Mountain.
Spruce Mountain scored its runs in the first, fifth and sixth innings. Catcher Eli Moffett stretched his long hit to center field into a triple and scored on a throwing error to third base in the first inning.
In the fifth, Max Labonte pinch hit for Nate Holland and got on with a walk. Holland pinch ran for Labonte and eventually scored Moffett’s sacrifice fly. Spruce got one more run in the sixth when Kolby Cotton singled and came home on Holland’s RBI single.
“We battled,” Spruce Mountain coach Jake Bessey said. “Oak Hill had some good timely hitting and found holes and we couldn’t take advantage of a couple of their mistakes.
“We played pretty well given the circumstances and the battle just didn’t go our way.”
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