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HUGHESVILLE -- Hughesville's offense had looked completely listless through five-plus innings in their Monday afternoon clash against Montgomery. Red Raider starter Parker Bennett pitched four nearly-perfect innings, and freshman Gage Furman was one out away from his second inning of scoreless relief work with a 4-0 lead.
Wynter Fogelmen and the rest of the Spartan lineup had other ideas, taking advantage of a few hits, a few walks, and a few errors to score eight runs with two outs in the sixth inning as Hughesville stormed back to beat Montgomery, 8-4, at Bodine Park.
"We play Hughesville Legion Baseball with most of the kids on Montgomery, but we weren't going to be friends with them during the game.," Fogelman said. "We really wanted to beat them. That was big for us because we don't really like Montgomery."
Without Fogelmen, there wouldn't have been an eight-run two-out rally. Fogelmen came up with two outs and two on with the game still 4-0, and hit a single up the middle to score a run. That seemed to inject new life into a moribound Spartan offense.
"We got the hits going, people got on base. We just kept hitting the ball, we were all rallying, and got it done," Fogelmen said.
Blake Babb came in to score on a wild pitch, and Fogelmen scored when a Jed Abernatha pop-up in a tricky spot up the first-base line was dropped. Cam Walker hit a sharp ground ball deep in the hole between shortstop and third that was misplayed by Montgomery to score the tying run, setting up Chase Fowler with a chance to give Hughesville the lead.
He did just that, hitting a frozen rope just over the outstretched glove of a diving Cody Sechrist on a ball hit directly over his head for a stand-up triple to give the Spartans the lead.
Fowler was 0 for 2 with two strikeouts in his previous plate appearances on Monday, but came up to the plate with some confidence.
"I just went in there with the mindset that was gonna hit the ball, and that's what happened," Fowler said. "I thought he might have had it, but then it slipped right by him.It was a feeling of relief knowing I came up in a big way."
Fowler, like the rest of his teammates in the sixth inning, was able to put past struggles behind the
"I said this to our team at the end. 'You looked fooled all day up there,' and he didn't look good, right? We talk about it all the time, the one-pitch mentality and having a groundhog mentality: step out, breathe, let's go, right, next pitch," Hughesville coach Chris Kish said. "And for him to not really look good with timing and balance, and to be able to do that, was huge for us."
Hughesville added three more runs in the inning on two walks and a wild pitch, and Dylan McCormick shut the door with another scoreless inning in the seventh after doing the same in the sixth in his first varsity action on the mound.
For a while, it looked like Montgomery was going to roll to a key non-conference win as they look to beef up their non-conference schedule. Parker Bennett was dominant on the mound, striking out ten in four innings, and they got contributions from the top of the order to rally for three runs in the top of the fifth for a 4-0 lead as Briar Persing and Chase Bennett both had RBI doubles in the inning.
But the bullpen and defense couldn't quite hold it together in the sixth inning to get the win.
Hughesville 8, Montgomery 4
Montgomery 100 030 0 -- 4 8 4
Hughesville 000 008 x -- 8 3 1
Bennett, Gage Furman (5), Cooper Roman (6), Mason Bryson (6) Sam Springman (6) and Lincoln Miller. Nate Bieber, McCormick (6) and Kyler Solomon. W: McCormick. L: Roman.
Top Montgomery hitters: Briar Persing 2-4, RBI, run; Parker Persing 2-3, RBI, BB, run. Top Hughesville hitters: Wyatt Fogelman 2-4, RBI.