Amaru Drives Wolverines Past Ashland

Westwood High School's Sean Amaru crushed his second home run of Friday's varsity baseball game in the bottom of the sixth to dead center field, capping a five-run comeback and leading the Wolverines (9-6) to a 10-9 home victory against Ashland (3-9).

Westwood, who trailed 8-3 heading into the last of the fourth, finally tacked it on against Ashland starter Tyler Keating, as they scored six runs in the fourth and fifth.

“I knew we had it in us,” said Amaru. “We’ve battled back in a couple games now but we just got down and our team kept going and going and it was a great team effort to keep fighting to get the win.”

Amaru hit his first in the third inning on what was one of the scariest things you will see in a baseball game. Ashland centerfielder Joe Byrnes collided with the wall in an attempt to make a sensational catch, while Amaru ended up rounding the bases.

Byrnes was quickly attended to by Westwood Athletic Trainer Paul Lilla and got up minutes later and was carted off the field to a standing ovation. Byrnes was rushed to the hospital and thankfully was said to be doing okay.

Shorty after, Westwood capitalized on some mental mistakes made by Ashland in the field. A couple of misread fly balls, ground balls and base running blunders, combined with the potent Wolverine offense coming alive is what Clocker head coach Scott Soderberg credits his team’s late collapse to.

“We made a couple of mistakes in the field and they got the momentum,” said Soderberg. “We’re almost there, but we have to clean up those little mistakes if we want to win. You can’t let good teams smell the victory, and we let them and they outhit us.”

Down 8-7 in the fifth, Westwood reliever Forrest Lovett replaced Nick Henderson who had gone the previous two plus innings and had stranded two runners in the fifth. Lovett allowed one inherited runner home but ultimately got out of the inning unscathed. He kept the Wolverines in the game by not allowing a run in the final three innings and bought the bats time to heat up once again. 

“He threw harder and it was a change of pace for us,” added Soderberg.

“He stemmed the tide, that was it,” said Westwood head coach Brian Whelan of Lovett. “He gave up the run but then was big and bounced back.”

Westwood chipped away once again and Amaru finally broke a 9-9 tie for good in the sixth when he went to dead center. He also ended the previous inning by picking off the potential go-ahead run at first.

Whelan was ultimately pleased with the win but talked about the effect that continual come-from-behind victories have on a team.

“We know we can hit but it wears on you, it’s a mental grind. I give our guys a lot of credit though, they stay with it no matter what,” said Whelan.

Costa Toubekis racked up three hits for Westwood and Bo Berluti knocked in the game-tying run in the fifth for Westwood.

Wolverine starter Glenn Parsons pitched the first two innings before being replaced by Nick Henderson and moving to second base. Parsons suffered a bit of bad luck as well as a ground ball took an unexpected hop off his face and knocked him out of the game. He too was okay.

Steve Scherer led the Clocker offense with three hits and three RBI and Nick Cunningham added two hits and two runs for Ashland.

The Wolverines jump to 9-6 after completing the season-sweep of Ashland, and the Clockers drop to 3-9 on the year.