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The (13-14) Huntington Huntsmen continued their "green" tidal wave roll through top seeded baseball teams by beating (25-5) and defending regional champ Whiteoak, 8-3 for the Division 4 District Championship at V.A. Memorial Stadium, Wednesday.
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The district title win is the first in Huntington High School history for a boys team sport. This completes a district tournament sweep of the top seeded teams, beating #1 seed Eastern Meigs and #2 seed Whiteoak.
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The Wildcats got on the board with a two-out rally in the top of the first inning with a single, a walk, then a two-run double from Evan Brill to take a 2-0 lead. The Huntsmen answered with a run scoring home first, when Weston Roop singled, went to second on a passed ball, then third on a wild pitch, before scoring on a double play. That cut the margin to 2-1.
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The back-breaker for Whiteoak was in the bottom of the second inning when Huntington scored five runs on only one hit, helped by three errors committed by the Wildcats for a 6-2 Huntington lead. Whiteoak cut the margin to 6-3 with a run in the fourth inning, but the Huntsmen added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings to stretch their lead to 8-3.
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Weston Roop started the game on the mound and picked up the win, with Gavin Free coming on in middle relief and held-off a number of Whiteoak threats. The Wildcats stranded 12 base runners for the game, including innings where they left the bases loaded in the third and fifth innings. Traeten Hamilton suffered the pitching loss for Whiteoak.
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Roop and Elijah McCloskey got things rolling on the offense as well. Roop reached base three times via one hit and two walks, scoring all three times. McCloskey had two hits and three RBI's- including a two-run double in their five run second inning.
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For the game- Huntington scored 8 runs on 4 hits, committing 2 errors and stranded 6 runners on base. Whiteoak scored 3 runs on 7 hits, committing 3 errors and leaving 12 runners on base.
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Huntington now advances to the D-4 Regional Semis at 5pm, May 30th at Lancaster's Beaver Stadium against East District Champ Toronto. They beat Strasburg-Franklin 5-1, Wednesday.
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(Huntington's Weston Roop pictured above)
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(Huntington's Elijah McCloskey pictured above)