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Fort Frye downs Waterford, 4-1

Fort Frye’s Tate Engle is tagged out at the plate by Waterford catcher Isaac Huffman trying to score on a base-hit by Tyler Bradford in Saturday’s Washington County Tournamnent at Waterford Elementary School. The Cadets scored a 4-1 win over the Wildcats to claim a spot in tonight’s championship game against Marietta. Photo by Mike Morrison.

WATERFORD — Fort Frye left hander Tyler Bradford fanned 16 Waterford hitters while allowing just three base hits as the Cadets downed the Wildcats 4-1 Saturday afternoon at Waterford Elementary School to earn a berth in the championship game of the third annual Washington County Baseball Tournament.

Bradford’s spectacular day on the mound was the second of the day for a Fort Frye southpaw as sophomore Devin Layton tossed a complete game four-hitter as the Cadets downed Belpre 7-1 earlier in the afternoon.

“Both Devin (Layton) and Tyler (Bradford) pitched incredible ballgames and Logan Isner did a great job behind the plate,”said Fort Frye head coach Sonny Bidwell.

The triple header opened with Waterford scoring a 10-0 five inning win over Belpre, backed by the three-hit pitching of Isaac Wagner and 11 base hits by the Waterford offense.

Clay Hayes got things rolling with a two-run homer in the last of the first and Braden Bellville, Brock Hayes and Noah Huffman each collected a pair of basehits for the winners.

The middle match-up saw a pitchers duel between Layton and Belpre right hander Jeremiah Stitt for four full innings before the Cadets used some small ball and a little long ball to pull away to the win.

With the game scoreless in the top of the fifth inning the Cadets finally managed to get to Stitt as back-to-back bunt singles by Luke Nelson and Garrett Lochary proceeded a two-run double by shortstop Tate Engle to give the Fort a 2-0 lead.

Engle promptly stole third and scored on a Belpre throwing error before Bradford reached base on a walk and eventually scored on yet another Golden Eagle miscue.

Belpre got a run back in the bottom of the fifth inning before Engle homered in the top of the seventh to give his team some insurance.

Layton walked just one hitter while fanning nine to make his first varsity start a winning one.

In the final game of the afternoon it would be the Wildcats who got on the board first as Riley Burns singled in Isaac Huffman to give them a 1-0 lead.

That lead lasted all of one inning as in the top of the second Bradford led off with a single and his battery-mate Isner followed with a long homerun over the left field fence to give the Cadets a 2-1 lead.

Those two runs would be plenty enough for Bradford as the senior lefty only seemed to get better as the game went along.

Bradford fanned two batter each in the games first four innings before striking out the side in the fifth inning on a minimum of nine pitches.

“I was able to get ahead in the count and was also able to hit the corners a lot,” said Bradford, who also went a perfect five-for-five at the plate in the tourney while scoring four runs. “I think that fifth inning got the team fired up and we went out and got a couple of more runs.”

Fort Frye added on a pair in the top of the sixth when Bradford singled, moved to second when Isner walked to set the table for a clutch two-out, two-run double by Layton that increased the Cadet lead to 4-1.

Bradford fanned the side once again in the sixth but ran into a little trouble in the final inning without surrendering a base-hit.

With one out in the top of the seventh Jordan Welch reached base when he was hit by a Bradford pitch and Huffman drew a walk.

Bradford made a nice unassisted put-out of Bryce Hilverding for the second out but walked Bellville to bring the powerful Clay Hayes to the plate with a change to win the game with one swing of the bat.

Hayes was unable to come up with the big hit however as Bradford struck him out for the final out of the game to put the Cadets in the championship game at Marietta Monday night.

With nine Wildcat players getting a late start to the season thanks to an outstanding year of Wildcat basketball, head coach Doug Huffman felt his team played well in their first real test of the year.

“We’ll take being right in a game to the very end against a team like Fort Frye with hardly any practice,” said Huffman, beginning his second year as Waterford head coach. “Bradford threw a very good ballgame, I just don’t think our timing is there quite yet.”

Bidwell was pleased with the way his team played in their first games of the 2017 season.

“We came up with some big clutch hits offensively and got some great pitching by both of our pitchers today,” said Bidwell, whose team will try to unseed a tough Marietta team as county champs on Monday evening. “We were able to get ahead of their hitters in both games and make them hit our pitches and I thought that was big.”

Waterford will travel to Warren Wednesday night in a consolation game.

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