BLOOMINGTON — Columbus East and Bloomington South found themselves deadlocked through the first four innings of Friday night’s baseball contest.
In the top of the fifth inning, the Olympians broke the tie.
Charlie Burton, who was hitting in the nine hole, crushed a solo home run over the left-field fence that hit a storage shed and gave the Olympians a 6-5 win.
“I switched to my two-strike approach that I have been working on,” Burton said. “I made great contact, and it went over.”
The Olympians gathered 10 hits as a team and made no errors defensively.
East coach Jon Gratz said his team is much more confident at the plate than it was earlier in the season.
“We are starting to hit the ball like I know we can,” he said. “We are starting to heat up, and hopefully it carries over into next week.”
Takahiro Yamada had a perfect night at the plate, going 4 for 4 with a double. Kyle Weiss finished with three singles.
“We had been in a slump as a team,” Burton said. “The past couple of games we have been coming together and pulling out hits.”
The game was supposed to have taken place today in a doubleheader, but with the impending rain coming through, the teams agreed to move their meeting up by a few hours.
The Olympians took advantage of several Panther errors early on, scoring four runs in the top of the third inning to lead 5-1.
The Panthers came storming back, however, in the bottom half of the third, tallying three hits and three runs to cut the East lead to 5-4.
Bloomington South then tied the game in the fourth inning when Gavin Yeskie hit a leadoff double and scored on a Tyler Van Pelt single.
Eric McMullen picked up the win in relief for the Olympians, shutting the Panthers down in the final three innings.
