(Above photo: Unioto winning pitcher Harley Patterson)
The Unioto Shermans used the strong pitching arm of SVC "Player of the Year" Harley Patterson and the offensive bats of Ryan Sigler and J.D. Blevins to claim the Division 2 District Baseball Championship, 3-0 over Athens Thursday at Ohio University.
Patterson fired a complete game four-hitter in blanking the Bulldogs, while also striking out 12 batters on the night. The offense was powered by a Ryan Sigler two-run single in the fifth inning and an RBI single from J.D. Blevins in the seventh.
Athens missed their biggest scoring opportunity in the bottom of the sixth inning when they loaded the bases, but were shut-down by Patterson and a nice running catch by Nick Ooten on a low liner to right field which ended the threat.
Shermans hitting highlights also came from Carson Debord, Ryan Burns and Blevins- who each had two hits.
The worst news of the night for Unioto was the injury of Ryan Burns, who sprained his ankle while sliding into home plate for the Shermans third run of the game.
Unioto had 3 runs on 8 hits and committed 1 error, while Athens had 4 hits and no errors.
In the earlier game, Circleville's Garrett Kennedy lined a bases loaded sacrifice fly to right field to score the winning run in a 4-3 upper bracket title win over Hillsboro.
Unioto will face Circleville at 2pm Thursday, May 24th in the Division 2 Regional Semi at Ohio University. 94 Country WKKJ and iHeart Radio will broadcast the game with airtime at 1:45pm.
Steubenville will face John Glenn in the 5pm semi-final that day.
To hear the Unioto-Athens game play-by-play from WKKJ's Mike Smith and B. Jay Dailey, go to our podcast link found below....
(Above photo: Circleville Tigers District Champs)