MAY 10, 2010 - DEGRAF
The Covington Buccaneers overcame the tournament jitters with a hard-fought 6-4 victory at Riverside on Monday.

"The kids were a little nervous at the beginning, but we scored a couple of runs early that helped," said Covington coach Mitch Hirsch. "For the majority of these kids, this was their first tournament game. We got the first one out of the way, so hopefully we'll be relaxed Wednesday."

Which is another tournament matchup against the team that has ended Covington's season the past three years, Lehman.

"If we play our game, we can do it," Hirsch said about the match-up with Lehman. "It depends on which team shows up."

A good Covington team showed up on Monday as the Buccaneers only committed one defensive error in the contest.

"We played good defense and when we do that it gives us a pretty good chance to win," Hirsch said. "(Andrew) DeHart threw out a runner at the plate and (Ben) Wilson threw another one out at second. We made the plays when we needed them."

Covington also received a steady pitching effort by junior hurler Jake Bitner, who pitched six innings and struck out five batters. He only allowed four hits in the contest.

"Jake threw well and gave us some innings," said Hirsch. "They (Riverside) can hit the ball pretty good, but we helped Jake out defensively."

Covington opened the game with a pair of runs in the top of the first as Brandon Flora squeezed in Bitner from third and C.J. Poling scored on a wild pitch.

But Covington left bases loaded in the second and two more runners stranded in the third.

This benefitted the favored Pirates as Riverside scored a run in the second and two more in the third to take a 3-2 lead.

"The kids never got rattled," Hirsch explained. "We had a hard time hitting the ball with runners on, but the kids kept battling and eventually we broke through."

That came in the fifth and sixth innings as the Buccaneers scored two runs in each inning.

Adam Craft led off the fifth with a single and Flora followed by drawing a walk. The two runners moved to second and third on a wild pitch and Steven Blei drove in Craft with a sacrifice.

Flora then scored on another Riverside wild pitch to make the score 4-3.

"We took advantage of some of their mistakes," said Hirsch.

Ben Wilson and Andrew DeHart both walked to open up the top of the sixth inning and then Poling laid down a perfect bunt to load the bases.

Bitner helped out his own cause with a single up the middle that scored Wilson and DeHart to push Covington's lead to 6-3.

Riverside responded with a run in the bottom of the sixth, but Adam Craft came in to pitch in the seventh to preserve the win for Covington.

Covington improves to 9-17 on the season.

SCORING BY INNINGS:
Covington ..............2...0...0...0...2...2...0 - 6 - 5 - 1
Riverside ...............0...1...2...0...0...1...0 - 4 - 4 - 1