April 24, 2008 – PITSBURG
It was a good old fashion pitching and defensive dual between Covington and Franklin Monroe on Thursday.

But in the end the visiting Buccaneers had enough to pull out a 2-1 win.

"I'm not ashamed of this performance by any means," said Covington coach Mitch Hirsh. "Franklin Monroe is a good team and this was a very well played game by both teams. I'm thrilled to get a win like this."

That was because of the pitching effort by Darrell Thobe and the flawless performance by the Buccaneer defense, which committed no errors in the contest.

"Darrell pitched very well tonight and our defense backed him up," Hirsch continued. "We're playing good defense and our pitching is solid. That helps in games like this."

Covington's pitching has been solid all season long and it has allowed Hirsch to keep the arms fresh.

"When your starter goes the distance, it keeps everyone else fresh," he said. "We have a pretty deep pitching staff as it is. So it's a big plus when we don't have to use two or three pitchers every night."

The Covington bats were also in top form, despite just five hits recorded on the afternoon.

"We hit the ball hard all night," Hirsch explained. "But they don't have a fence and their outfielders play pretty deep. We hit a lot of balls pretty hard, but they were able to make plays on them because they had so much field behind them."

After four innings of scoreless baseball, Covington was able to get things rolling in the fifth.

Thobe helped himself out by reaching on an error to start the inning and then moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Kyle Kanet.

David Moss drilled a line drive between first and second to score Thobe for the first run of the game.

Adam Craft then singled to put runners at first and second and Nate Lavey followed with an RBI single to make the score 2-0 with just one out.

But Covington couldn't do any more damage as the next two batters struck out.

"We left 12 runners on base tonight, including bases loading in the fourth inning," Hirsch stated. "Either they would make a great play or we would strike out. We never could get the big hit to break the game open."

Still, the 2-0 lead was enough for Thobe as he held Franklin Monroe in check the rest of the way.

Thobe went the distance and struck out eight batters along the way. He also kept his pitch count down as he only walked one batter.

"He had good command of his pitches tonight," Hirsch praised.

Four of Covington's five hits came from two batters as Adam Craft went 2-for-4 and Nate Lavey was 3-for-3.

Moss and Lavey each recorded an RBI in the low scoring affair.

Covington improves to 9-3 on the season and 6-1 in the Cross County Conference.

The Buccs travel to Fort Loramie over the weekend for the Fort Loramie Tournament.

Scoring by Innings:
Covington ..................0...0...0...0...2...0...0 - 2 .. 5 .. 0
Franklin Monroe .......0...0...0...0...0...1...0 - 1 .. 4 .. 2