Warwick Blanks Mounts
- 25 May 2010
Baseball games aren't often decided in the first inning.Warwick had other ideas Monday.
In the Class AAAA nightcap of a District Three first-round playoff doubleheader at Manheim Township, Adam Zipko staked himself to a 3-0 first-inning lead with a two-run home run off fellow ace Madison Zimmerman and No. 8 Warwick eliminated No. 9 Ephrata, 10-0, in six innings.
The Warriors (13-6) advance to meet Hempfield Thursday at a time and site to be determined. The No. 16 Black Knights pulled the upset of the tournament by eliminating No. 1 Cedar Cliff, 1-0, at Northern.
"The nice thing is, they're a familiar foe," Warriors coach Matt Gale said, looking ahead to Thursday's rubber match with Hempfield.
The second-round matchup features two teams that finished in the lower half of the L-L Section One standings and didn't even make the league playoffs.
No matter. Both are making up for lost time, and for extended time off.
"These guys came out and worked hard every day," Gale said of his team. "After two weeks off, they were really hungry."
It showed. Zimmerman, who spun a five-inning no-hitter against a vaunted Cedar Crest offense in last Thursday's league semifinals, saw his first pitch Monday night roped to right-center field for a double by J.T. Garner.
Zimmerman answered with a pair of swinging strikeouts, then surrendered a run-scoring single to center by Austin Klinger.
Two pitches later, Zipko homered to left.
"He threw a fastball and I was expecting a curve," Zipko said. "I was fortunate to get my bat on it and fortunate it went out."
"We knew they were a small-ball team," Gale said of the league champion Mountaineers (17-8). "The way to kill a small-ball team is to jump on them. And that's what we did."
The three first-inning runs proved to be more than enough for Zipko, who improved to 8-2 this season and 3-0 lifetime against Ephrata.
The senior right-hander allowed just three hits, struck out nine and walked two. He threw 92 pitches, 63 for strikes.
"He did to us what he did last time, he kept us off balance," Mounts coach Adrian Shelley said. "We thought we had a good read on him, but it's one thing to talk about it, it's another to go out and do it.
"He's a heck of a pitcher. He's proved that in his career. My hat's off to him."
Zimmerman, meanwhile, fanned eight, walked two and scattered nine hits. He gave up four runs in the fourth after Garner reached on what should have been the third out -- a swinging strikeout on a wild pitch that kept the inning alive. D.J. Johnson scored from third, and then Jordan Donmoyer delivered a two-run single and Kyle Keener an RBI triple.
Warwick tacked on three more runs in the sixth, invoking the 10-run rule.
We here at www.ephratamounts.com are proud sponsors of the Dodgeball for Diabetes tournament.