Sweet 16

Lightning Baseball vs. Wilmington Yellow Jackets @ Conway High School

Thursday July 28, 2005

After grasping a wild card position to move on to the 16-team sudden death bracket of the tournament, the Lightning 13’s faced off against the highly ranked Wilmington Yellow Jackets at Conway High School on Thursday morning.

Both teams came out swinging as the Yellow Jackets had four hits and the Lightning defense had two fielding miscues, allowing two runs to score in the top half of the first inning. The Lightning, as they had done all tournament, answered quickly with three runs in the bottom half of the inning. Connor Lyons (Bedford, NH) started it for the Lightning with a leadoff double and later scored on a fielder’s choice by Jason Federico (Wakefield, MA). Federico and Evan Bunker (Topsfield, MA), who followed Jason with a base hit of his own, both scored on a two out single through the left side by Michael Amaral (Tewksbury, MA).

While the Yellow Jackets tied the game at 3-3 in the top half of the second by way of a walk, a throwing error, and an RBI single, the Lightning 13’s rallied back in the bottom of the fourth as Gavin Mahoney (Winthrop, MA) and Lyons reached based safely with a hit by pitch and a single to lead off the inning. Mahoney would later score on Bunker’s fielder’s choice and Lyons would cross the plate on a hard hit ball to third base by Greg Ladd (Danvers, MA), making the score 5-3 in favor of the Lightning.

Federico gave the Lightning four tough innings on the mound before handing the ball over to Bunker with a two run lead. Bunker retired the side in order in the fifth before giving up one run on three singles in the sixth inning which cut the lead down to 5-4. After walking the lead off man in the seventh, Bunker was able to induce a “tailor-made” 4-6-3 double play before getting the eighth hitter to pop up to third base to end the game.