If North Montgomery junior Roman Utterback had any nerves before making his first varsity start of his career on Saturday, he definitely didn’t show it. After suffering a 6-5 loss on Friday night against Seeger, the North Montgomery Charger baseball team was back in action as they hosted Portage Central (MI). The visiting Mustangs collected two hits and a got on the board first in the top of the first inning. From then on Utterback and the Charger defense were lights out as they cruised to a 6-1 win.
Utterback picked up the victory by throwing a complete game and allowing just three hits and one walk while striking out four. The Charger defense showed out also fielding a clean game with not a single error.
“All my pitches felt good today and I felt like i could throw them in any count to keep their hitters off balance,” Utterback said. “It took me a little bit to settle in after that slow start but I got comfortable and knew what I wanted to do. Our defense played amazing behind me coming up clutch with a couple of nice plays including a double play to end it. It was a nice day to play baseball and I’m just glad I could hep my team come away with a win.”
The Charger offense responded in their half of the first inning to even things up at 1-1 when Ross Dyson picked up an RBI by beating out a throw to first which would have ended the inning on a double play.
Then in the bottom of the second is when the Charger offense got going in a big way. Jarrod Kirsch scorched a ball to deep left field for an RBI double to give the Chargers a 2-1 lead. After a Cade Cole pop up which gave the Mustangs two outs, Brookes Walters, Dyson, Dylan Braun, and Corbin Meadows recorded four straight singles and thanks to a couple of Mustang throwing errors, North Montgomery added four more runs to take a 5-1 lead.
“Portage is a well disciplined team and a well-coached team,” Charger coach Matt Voorhees said. “It was so awesome to see Roman go out there in his first varsity start and do what he did. He only walked one batter and we didn’t have a single error. Both of those things killed us against Seeger on Friday. We knew that Roman was very capable and he showed us all of the hard work that he’s been putting in.”
The Charger offense tallied nine total hits and was led by Walters’ 3-4 day at the plate. Meadows added two hits with Cole, Kirsch, Dyson and Braun all adding one.
Voorhees was also proud of the way his team came into Saturday after suffering a tough loss just less than 24 hours earlier.
“We could’ve come in today and hung our heads about that game and play flat, but we didn’t,” he said. “We’re hitting the ball really hard right now and our top-half of the order is all hitting a lot of line drives and squaring up the ball nicely. You can tell our guys are playing for each out there and are having fun doing it.”
An under-rated part of the Charger win came while they were on base. They were able to use the threat of their speed and athleticism to play mind games with the Mustang pitchers which allowed in turn the Charger hitters at the plate to take advantage. Austin Sulc recorded three stolen bases in the win with Kirsch and Utterback adding one each.
“We have really good instincts on the base paths,” Voorhees added. “Sulc may not be the fastest guy, but he does a tremendous job of reading pitchers so we give him a little more freedom while he’s out there. They know that I don’t always have to give them the sign to steal and that they have the green light sometimes out there.”
With the win the Chargers improve to 3-1 on the season. They have very busy week as on Monday they’ll be back at home to take on Parke Heritage before opening up Sagamore Conference play on Tuesday and Wednesday against Western Boone. Friday they’ll travel to Covington and Saturday play at the illustrious Loeb Stadium when they take on Lafayette Jeff.
