By STEVE JACKSON
South Shore 5 baseball teams, representing five public high schools in the South Shore of Hillsborough County, posted an 8-5 won-lost record last week, the best mark of the season. The five diamond squads have 12 games scheduled for this week.
Sumner High, 4-2, plays three games away, including one Saturday at 11 a.m. at Alonso. Riverview High, 5-3, played at Spoto High early this week, and the Sharks visit 7-1 Newsome March 6 before hosting 4-2 Strawberry Crest at 10 a.m., Saturday, March 8. Lennard High, 3-4, hosted tough Bloomingdale, 6-1, early this week and meets visiting Durant, 3-3, at Ruskin this Thursday. Spoto High, 5-3, travelled to Riverview March 4 and hosts Sumner March 6. East Bay High, 3-5, was at 3-4 Brandon Tuesday and welcomes 4-4 Plant City Thursday this week. All weekday games start at 7 p.m. and Saturday games at various times.
Under head coach Victor Martinez, the Lennard Longhorns posted a 2-1 mark last week. In a tremendous pitchers’ duel early last week, the Longhorns, behind hurler junior JV Brennick, prevailed 3-2 over neighboring rival East Bay’s pitchers, junior JJ Groover and senior Mike Mowell. The Longhorns were walloped 16-5 by Sickles in a mid-week game but bounced back to spear the Jefferson Dragons 8-1 in an extra-inning game last Saturday.
Lennard plays at Brandon, March 10 and hosts hapless 1-7 King High, March 13. The Longhorns have crossed the plate 29 times so far and given up 37 runs this season.
The Riverview Sharks, of coach Garrett Thompson, were 1-2 last week. The Sharks lost the early week game 9-3 to Sumner and dropped a 6-5 extra inning game to Wharton last Saturday. But in between those defeats, the Sharks pounded out 11 hits to rip Brandon High 12-4. Riverview pitcher Parker Burt was the beneficiary of Riverview’s hot bats as he threw six innings, walked no one and gave up two unearned and two earned runs with last inning relief from Nathan Perry. Among the hitting stars for Riverview were junior Justin Edwards with three RBIs on a 2 for 3 night. Sophomore Jack Crawford scored three times on 2 for 3 batting while senior Ryan Butner continued his torrid hitting, stroking 2 for 4 with a pair of RBIs.
Next week Riverview welcomes rival East Bay on Tuesday and hosts a weak Tenoroc Titans from Lakeland on March 13. The Titans are 0-5, having scored only five runs and given up 97 scores this season. Riverview has tallied 72 runs and yielded only 29.
Coach Ronald Ruiz and the East Bay Indians came back from the early week defeat to Lennard, 3-2, to garner two more wins last week. The Indians demolished Hillsborough High Feb. 27 in Tampa, 16-3, behind an impressive team offensive performance and a complete game pitching game by Cameron Cook, selected as Player of the Game. EB batters Conner Gavigan and Rory Beauford both had big sticks. Gavigan knocked in four runs, scored three and went 2 for 3 at the dish. Beauford blasted a triple, scored three times and registered an RBI.
East Bay’s offense has scored 51 runs on the season while seeing opposition score 53 times. The Indians visit Riverview next Tuesday and host 6-2 Gaither, March 13.
Spoto High, with new head coach Livings Milledge at the helm, finally broke a three-game losing streak last Saturday by making some noise with the bats. The Spartans topped Tampa Bay Tech, now 0-7, by a 9-7 score. Prior to the victory over TBT, the Spartans last week suffered a pair of crushing defeats. First, the Plant City Raiders came to Spoto and no-hit the Spartans 10-1. Plant City’s Hagan Smith went six innings and struck out a dozen. Junior Merrick Smith mopped up the last inning and whiffed two. Spoto finally banged out two runs on three hits at Lutz but were overwhelmed by Steinbrenner High, 19-2, later in the week. Coach Milledge will probably continue to struggle next week with a visit to Durant on Tuesday. But things will most likely be more competitive March 13 with the visit to Spoto from 1-7 Hillsborough High, which has registered 38 runs and coughed up 68.
The Spartans have scored 55 times this season and given up 47 runs. The Spoto roster for February lists zero seniors.
Sumner High, of coach Kennedy Duran, is riding a four-game winning streak. After three games this week, in which the Stingrays are favored, the Rays host the 7-1 Newsome Wolves from Lithia, March 11. Sumner has been flashing some timely hitting and good pitching. Senior Sebastian Peralta has slugged a home run and touts a batting average of .524. Senior Isaiah Welch is hitting at a .400 clip. Juniors Winston Pennant at .368 and Cameron Pauquette at .312 are also pounding the horsehide. Junior Ethan DeJesus and Welch are also providing the ’Rays some outstanding mound work. In 16.1 innings Welch is 2-0 with a 2.10 ERA (earned run average). DeJesus is also sparkling with 15.1 innings of work to compile a 2-1 record, a 1.37 ERA, with 28 strikeouts and 10 walks. (For more Sumner sports, see articles and photos by Francis Fedor in the The ObserverNews print and in ObserverNews.net.)
Four of the teams from the South Shore Five will participate in the heralded Saladino Baseball Tournament, which runs Saturday, March 15, through Thursday, March 20. Sumner and Lennard are in the Silver Division, which plays at Lennard High. Spoto and Riverview are in the Bronze Division, which plays at Riverview High. All 32 teams from Hillsborough County play at least three games.