St. Amant’s seventh inning comeback dooms Catholic

ST. AMANT - St. Amant rallied from a four run deficit to score five unanswered in a 5-4 non-district comeback victory over Catholic Tuesday afternoon at Gator Park.

“We have done it before,” St. Amant head coach Bob Lemons said. “The program has done it before. We talked about that. We didn’t deserve to win it but on the flip side, we hung around and the guys that came into pitch held them in check.”

Dillon Morin scored the winning run with two outs in the bottom of the seventh when Caleb Templet lined over a leaping Gannon Achord at second.

Jacob Templet lined a double off the right field fence to open the inning and advanced on Chris Boyter’s sacrifice bunt before scoring on two pass balls to knot it up 4-4. Morin then lined pass short before Lee Elisar’s sacrifice bunt put the winning run in scoring position.

“We needed help from them,” Lemons said. “Two wild pitches after a failed bunt attempt - you are not going to get those things handed to you day in and day out. That is why we are fortunate. We shouldn’t have won but at the same time we kept ourselves in it.”

The victory marked St. Amant’s (10-4) third comeback win of the season negating six errors that Catholic (7-7) used to build a 4-0 lead.

“We told our guys the one thing you can count on against St. Amant is you know they are going to keep playing the game and they did that,” Catholic head coach Kyle Achord said. “We had numerous opportunities to take control of the game early and we missed them. We allowed them to hang around and when you allow a good team to do that you give them a chance and they took advantage of it. We missed some opportunities to score runs and they had guys with big at bats late. That was the difference in the ball game.”

Morin (3-0) picked up the win in one inning of relief. Cody LeBlanc (0-2) took the loss.

Catholic quickly got on the scoreboard when leadoff hitter Colin McGinty dropped a hit to right and stretched it into a double off St. Amant starter Jake Bordelon. Achord’s sacrifice fly put the Bears ahead after the runner advanced on an error at second. Bordelon struck out Ben Llorance to get out of the inning after walking consecutive batters to load the bases.

Catholic starter Jamie McClure retired the first six batters he faced.

The Bears added a run in the second inning when LeBlanc lined through the center of the infield with one out, stole second and scored on McGinty’s liner to left.

Chris Sciambra reached on an error to lead off the third before Bordelon hit Peter Ottsen and walked Matt Dubreuil to load the bases with no outs but St. Amant only surrendered one run when reliever Dillon Savoy forced Llorance into a double play and got out of the inning with a pop up.

“We didn’t want to give up the big inning,” Lemons said. “(Dillon) got the double play ball. He has made some improvements changing his arm slide. He throws from down under now.”

Alex Russell lined to right to lead off the bottom half for St. Amant’s only hit off McClure. Adrian Bourgeois reached on a fielder’s choice bunt, stole second and advanced to third but Morin lined out to the left gap warning track to end the inning.

Catholic’s final run came in the fourth when McGinty grounded off Savoy, stole second and scored on Achord’s liner to right. Savoy struckout Sciambra to end the inning.

St. Amant quickly went to work on reliever Dylan Gregoire in the bottom half when Caleb Templet lined through the left infield after Elisar drew a leadoff walk. Kahn Petite’s single off the fence plated a run before a throwing error to second on Dylan Delaune’s grounder to the mound crossed another.

Reliever Justin Manton surrendered a double to Ottsen inside the third base line to open the fifth inning but struckout the next two batters he faced and got out of the inning with a groundout.

Catholic threatened in the sixth inning when LeBlanc drew a walk and McGinty reached on an error but one out later Elisar threw out pinch running Thomas Armstrong at home to catcher Russell from third and Manton struckout Sciambra looking.

Elisar drew a leadoff walk in the bottom half off LeBlanc and Caleb Templet lined off his glove. Petite dropped a hit over short to plate a run after Tanner Sheets beat out a double play. LeBlanc struckout the next two batters he faced.

Morin walked Ottsen to open the seventh before striking out Dubreuil and forcing Llorance into a double play.

Caleb Templet was 3 for 4 with a RBI, while Petite was 2 for 3 with two RBI and Jacob Templet was 1 for 2 for St. Amant.

McGinty was 3 for 4 with a RBI and two runs, while Achord was 1 for 3 with two RBIs for Catholic.