No sharing: Alliance rallies vs. rival Marlington, wins outright EBC baseball title

LEXINGTON TWP. — High school baseball is difficult to predict.

Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Game to game.

In this light, Friday's rivalry game between Alliance and Marlington — dripping with Eastern Buckeye Conference implications, featuring 10 combined errors and almost ending in disaster — made perfect sense.

Visiting Alliance fought back from a pair of two-run deficits to win 5-4 and take the outright EBC championship.

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Marlington would've shared it with a win Friday and opened the door for Carrollton and West Branch to grab pieces too.

Instead, behind the pitching of senior right-hander Tra'Sean Williams, the Aviators kept it all to themselves. The outright title is Alliance's first baseball league championship in 14 years.

"It would've been like a four-way tie. That's like, why even have it?" Alliance head coach Jeff Graffice said with a laugh. "It's nice for these kids. They worked hard all winter long and got after it. No one was expecting us to be very good."

That includes Graffice, who would've been happy with 5-5 or 6-4 in the league.

But led by the pitching of Williams and Eric Bennett this season, the Aviators finish at 8-2 in the EBC and sport an impressive 17-4 overall record as tournament time approaches.

Williams threw 103 pitches to go the distance Friday and improve to 5-0. Along the way, he allowed four runs (all unearned) on nine hits, struck out five and walked one.

The Aviators committed six errors to Marlington's four. All but one of the game's nine combined runs were unearned.

"It's mentally challenging watching that," Williams said of the defensive struggles. "But you've got to keep giving your team energy. Don't put your head down, and keep the energy up."

None of Alliance's runs came on a run-producing base hit. Sam Gress drove in two runs on ground balls. K'Vaughn Davis, Carter Bugara and Rome Biggers each had sacrifice flies.

Biggers' RBI proved to be the winner in the top of the seventh. That followed Ryan Bruni's booming double to the right-center gap that put Brady White at third base.

"We did a good job of not giving up and not giving in," Graffice said. "We fought back."

That Marlington (9-9, 6-4) had a chance to grab a share of its second straight league title was impressive in itself. The Dukes' University of Akron-bound shortstop, Drew Denham, is out for the entire season because of a knee injury. Their ace, reigning EBC Player of the Year and University of Kentucky recruit Tommy Skelding, is limited to DH duties due to impending UCL surgery.

But the Dukes beat Alliance 6-3 on Thursday and then led 2-0 in the second inning Friday on sophomore Dylan Heatherington's sac fly and an RBI single from Bowling Green recruit Caden Bates. They went back in the lead at 4-2 on sophomore Travis Hoffmeyer's two-out, two-run single in the fifth.

"That's a credit to the kids. They don't quit. They don't backdown," Marlington head coach Cody Jones said. "They're going to fight until that 21st out is made and they're going to give you everything they've got."

Sophomore starter Sam Yoder pitched into the sixth inning for Marlington. Garett Dillon, still another sophomore, went 3-for-4 with two runs. Junior Carter Difloure took the loss in relief.

The Dukes put two on and with two outs in the seventh for Heatherington, who lifted a fairly deep fly ball to right-center.

Davis the right fielder and White the center fielder converged before the bigger Davis reached up, caught it and had White kind of bounce off him like a defensive back losing a 50-50 ball to Davis on the football field.

"I thought they were going to collide and that was going to bring in a run," Williams said with a relieved smile.

Davis, who seems to not feel an ounce of pressure and joked with spectators while in the on-deck circle in the sixth, turned his ankle in the postgame celebration and limped through the handshake line.

"He's our Manny Ramirez," Graffice kidded, before adding, "These guys don't even know who the heck Manny Ramirez is."

Reach Josh at josh.weir@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @jweirREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: High school baseball: Alliance tops Marlington for outright EBC title