High school baseball: South Lewis pounces on Watertown to stretch win streak to 14 straight

WATERTOWN — The South Lewis baseball team has gotten the jump on opposing teams after moving up to play in the Frontier League’s Division I.

This proved to be the case again Monday as sparked by Conner Carpenter, the Falcons took another big step.

Carpenter tripled to lead off the game as South Lewis scored 11 runs over the first three innings to outslug Watertown and record an 18-13 triumph in a division game on a summer-like evening at the Alex T. Duffy Fairgrounds.

“We love to get up early, we’ve got to jump on them quick and don’t look back — that’s coach (Chad) Brown’s motto,” Carpenter said.

The Falcons extended their winning streak to 14 games, improving to 15-1, including 11-1 in league play.

“This is a big win, a big win for us,” Carpenter, a center fielder said. “I mean, they’re a (Class) AA school, Watertown, they have very good hitters on their team. But a big win for South Lewis.”

Also, South Lewis clinched at least a share of the division title.

“Coming into the season they’ve worked hard,” South Lewis coach Chad Brown said. “We knew we were going to be playing the A’s and B’s, and that’s been a goal of ours, just to try and come in and play well and just try and win that league.”

“It’s great, we’re a pretty senior heavy team, so to do that for their last year, it feels great,” Falcons shortstop Kal Cihocki said.

The game proved to be a slugfest as both teams combined for 35 hits, including 19 from the Cyclones.

Carpenter, Cihocki and Maddox Morrison each totaled three hits and five different players each drove in a pair of runs for South Lewis.

After hitting a triple to lead off the game, Carpenter scored on single to right field by Morrison.

Watertown answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning on an RBI double from Nolan Brown and a run-scoring single to deep center field by Liam Flowers.

But South Lewis answered by batting around to generate nine runs in the second inning, with Case Allen, Gauge Hartley, Carpenter, Morrison, Cihocki, Robert Dailey and Jackson McCall each delivering RBI singles.

Watertown didn’t help its cause by committing five errors in the frame.

“That was probably the worst I’ve seen us play defensively all year,” Watertown coach Riley Moonan said. “So we definitely dug ourselves in a hole there, but they easily could have just thrown in the towel and call it a day, but we definitely tried battling back there. But we made just one too many mistakes in the field to really kind of force a comeback.”

After the Cyclones got a run back on an RBI single from Eddie Hayden in the bottom of the inning, the Falcons scored a run in third to push the lead to 11-3.

Watertown responded with a pair of runs in the bottom of the inning on RBI singles from Ben Hopperstad-Bartlett and Flowers to pull within 11-5.

“I tell you what, Watertown, they didn’t die, they didn’t go away, they kept at it and did a nice job,” Brown said. “But we seemed to answer, also, that was the thing, they would put a couple runs up, but we would match them with a couple runs, that’s sort of how the whole game went.”

South Lewis plated three more runs in the fourth, keyed by a two-run triple from Cihocki, to lead 14-5 and added two runs in the fifth and single runs in both the sixth and seventh.

“Those guys, one through nine, they put their bats on the ball, they’re good hitters,” Moonan said of South Lewis. “You really have to give them credit.”

The Cyclones didn’t go quietly by scoring three runs in the fourth inning on RBI single from Brown and a two-run triple by Hopperstad-Bartlett and five more in the fifth as Hayden belted a three-run home run over the left-field wall.

Despite mounting its comeback bid, Watertown (7-11, 5-7) also made 11 total errors.

Hayden and Brown each went 4-for-5 on the day, with Brown hitting a double, and drove in four and three runs, respectively, for the Cyclones, while Hopperstad-Bartlett went 3-for-3 and drove in three runs of his own.

The Cyclones had won three of their previous five games, with victories against Beaver River, South Jefferson and Carthage.

“We have a fairly young team, we’ll only graduate two, so there’s going to be growing pains,” Moonan said. “But they’re starting to play better together as a unit and without a doubt, the talent is there. We’ve just to be able to put it together whether one day we’re playing great defense and our bats aren’t there, or like today our bats were there but our defense was not.

“We’ve got to consistently play defense and offense at a high level on a day-to-day basis in order to be more successful in the future.”

South Lewis has traditionally played in the league’s “C” Division, but after the program moved up to Class B this year, it also chose to compete in Division I.

“We’ve been working hard, so we deserve to get a chance at a higher level,” Cihocki said. “And now that we’re here, we’re playing the best that we can.”

“I think we’re just all around playing pretty well,” Brown said. “When you talk about putting the ball in play and make things happen, also, our pitchers are throwing strikes and defensively we’re playing OK. Tonight we had a couple blunders, but things happen and that’s the game.”

The Falcons hope to earn one of the top seeds in upcoming sectional play, perhaps even snaring a No. 1 seeding for the tournament, which begins next week.

“We’ve been in the C’s for years and with the cut number we have to play in the B’s,” Brown said. “It’s working out for us, we’re playing OK right now.”

“It’s been a while for us, so really to have a great season like we have now, everybody’s pretty excited about it,” Cihocki said.

The Falcons and Cyclones will square off again at 5 p.m. Wednesday at South Lewis, also in league play.

“Pretty crazy,” Carpenter said of the team playing in Division I. “But we’ve been playing well, our pitchers have been throwing great and our hitters have been phenomenal.”