Published: July 19, 2008 11:47 pm      

Coming together

Fifth-inning explosion lifts Fairmont all-stars to victory

CLARKSBURG — When asked to describe Fairmont’s 11-12 Little League all-star team, Steve Mohr didn’t think long and hard over his response.

It came quickly, and probably isn’t what one would expect.

“We just have a unique group of kids this year; we really do,” Mohr, the team’s head coach, said. “We don’t practice real well — we’re bobbling balls and all that — but when they walk between the white lines, something happens.”

It happened again in the state tournament Saturday, as Fairmont shrugged off a slow start and throttled Chapmansville, 15-2, to open pool play.

Fairmont, the District 5 champion, will take on Barboursville today at 3:30 p.m. in Bridgeport.

Saturday was a mirror image of many of Fairmont’s games this season. That is, scrap together a few runs in the early going, then, seemingly out of nowhere, put together a big inning.

Fairmont led 3-0 in the third after Ryder Skarzinski’s two-run home run, but finally hit its collective stride the next inning.

It certainly didn’t take long, as leadoff hitter Austin Norman ripped the first pitch he saw for a solo home run to make it 4-0. Gage Hannah added a two-run single, and Ronnie Mills provided the inning’s exclamation point, hitting a three-run homer into the trees in deep left field.

“You just never know when they’re going to kick in,” Mohr said. “It’s close the first two or three innings and then we might erupt for four or five runs.

“We just kept chipping away and did it as a team. Baseball is a team effort. If you want to do an individual sport, you play golf or horseshoes or something.”

Fairmont’s offense continued to work as one in the sixth with six more runs to break things wide open.

It began the inning with five straight hits and had eight batters reach base in the frame. In all, five players — Skarzinski, Brandon Plivelich, Johnny Kesling, Sterling Fitzwater and Luke Hrapchak — had RBI hits in the sixth.

Norman, Skarzinski and Hannah had two hits each to pace Fairmont.

“We tried to work the pitch count, try to get it to the hitters’ advantage, and I think we did that,” Mohr said.

Kesling also gave the team a stellar showing on the mound, giving up one hit over three innings. The right-hander, who left the game after 42 pitches and is eligible to throw again Monday, struck out eight of the 10 batters he faced.

E-mail Nick Cammuso at ncammuso@timeswv.com.