XENIA — It was a sunny day. There’s two teams that love to play the game of baseball, and each had the day off on their schedule. What do you do?
You play baseball!
Host Xenia won the nonleague contest, 5-3, but both teams benefited from the game.
Xenia and South Charleston Southeastern both wound up with an open date on their respective schedules, and each had teams beg off from playing them for one excuse or another. So Buccaneers coach Barry Claus sent his friend Craig Isaac a text over the weekend, wanting to know whether Isaac’s Trojans would like to come over for a game.
“He texted me and wanted to know whether we’d wanna play, and we were down two games, so I said yeah. We don’t care how big they are, or how small we are, we wanna play baseball,” Isaac said. “We had a big game yesterday. A tough loss (to Springfield Northeastern), and I knew that my guys had to get back on the baseball diamond and play.”
Southeastern is one of the top teams in the Ohio Heritage Conference, second by that one game to Northeastern. They came into Xenia with a 15-4 overall record, so Claus knew that his Buccaneers (8-10) would have a good challenge ahead of them.
The Trojans got on the scoreboard first with back-to-back-to-back singles by Trevor King, Andrew Lyons and Hayden McKee, with McKee scoring King, in the first inning. But Xenia responded in the bottom half of the inning with two runs. Lead-off hitter Logan Bilbrey crossed the plate (off T.J. Oliver’s single), and then Oliver scored on Sam Lockwood’s single.
Xenia added to its lead in the third with three more runs.
Bilbrey led off with a walk, stole second and then stole third. Then Evan Adkins brought Bilbrey home with a sacrifice fly into left field. Oliver singled to left, then scored on Ryan Day’s double. Then, Day later came in to score on a passed ball to put the Buccaneers out in front 5-1.
Southeastern added a run in both the fifth and seventh innings, but could get any closer.
Oliver went 3-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored, Bilbrey scored twice without getting a hit (he reached on an error and then on a walk), and Day had a single, double, RBI and a run scored.
Bucs pitcher Travis Newell scattered six Southeastern hits to get the complete-game win.
King and Trojan teammate Ty Lau led Southeastern with two hits apiece.
“This was a make-up game for us, because (Kettering) Alter backed out of a game with us. You can put whatever you want about Alter, I don’t care if they read it. But then I sent a text to Craig, and he’s got the same kind of baseball mentality as we’ve got: It’s spring baseball. You play when you can play.
“We knew they’d be a solid opponent. I think they’re going to make a nice run in the Division IV tournament. They’re a quality opponent for anybody they’ll face.”
Xenia snapped a three-game losing streak with Wednesday’s win. They won’t have much time to rest on their laurels, however. The Bucs play at Piqua on Thursday April 27, then they’ll host Vandalia Butler for a 5 p.m. Friday April 28 game before heading down Interstate 75 to Franklin Community Park for a Saturday April 29 doubleheader with Franklin.
