Big first key for Indians

MINSTER, Ohio — The first inning set the tone.
Fort Recovery escaped a threat by the New Knoxville Rangers in the opening frame and then scored four times in the bottom of the inning. The Indians wouldn’t score again, but they didn’t need to as Jared Kahlig kept the opposing bats quiet in a 4-1 victory in the opening round of the Division IV sectional tournament at Minster.
The victory ended a two-year tournament drought for the Tribe, which also topped New Knoxville 5-4 during the regular  season for its first conference win since 2008.
“It’s a good win for Fort Recovery baseball,” said FRHS coach Jerry Kaup, whose team lost 5-1 to New Knoxville in its opening tournament game last season. “This is a nice win. I think they believed that they could do this. We’ve kind of been building to this. We lost a couple of tough ball games early in the league … We’re hopefully going to have a nice tournament experience.”
The Indians advance to play host Minster (19-5), the defending state champion, in Wednesday’s sectional championship game at 5 p.m. The Wildcats defeated FRHS 10-0 during the regular season.
New Knoxville (2-14) had the chance to put pressure on Fort Recovery early Saturday as each of its first three batters reached base on an error, a fielder’s choice and a Shane Topp single to left field. It had runners on second and third with just one out, but Kahlig came through for the Indians.
The senior pitcher struck out Rangers clean-up hitter Lucas Leffel and then induced a pop-up to catcher Blake Boughman to end the inning.
“That was huge,” said New Knoxville coach Ron Reineke. “When you’ve got guys on second and third with one out, you must make contact with the baseball. … It didn’t happen.”
Fort Recovery (8-14) responded immediately when Collin O’Dell hit a one-out single to left-center field in the bottom of the first inning and then stole second base. Blake Boughman delivered the Tribe’s first run with a single to right-center field, and Hayden Pottkotter and Jacob Muhlenkamp added back-to-back singles to load the bases.
Kahlig pushed Boughman to the plate with a sacrifice fly to right field, and then Shane Pottkotter came through with the key hit of the game.  With New Knoxville’s outfielder’s playing shallow, Pottkotter hit a line drive over the head of Spencer Wolf in left field. Wolf tracked back and nearly made a difficult catch, but the ball popped out of his glove allowing Hayden Pottkotter and Muhlenkamp to score for a 4-0 FRHS lead.
“It put so much more pressure on them,” said Kaup of getting on the board early. “If it’s a 0-0 ball game in the sixth inning or seventh inning we are going to have a lot more pressure. It really helped loosen us up.”
The Indians managed just one more hit in the game, a single to left field by Muhlenkamp in the sixth inning, but with Kahlig on the mound it didn’t matter.
Kahlig didn’t allow another runner past first base until the sixth inning, when the Rangers scored their only run of the game. In the seventh he took care of the first out on a come-backer up the middle and then struck out Tyler Shreve for the second out. He induced a ground ball from Wes Meyer to O’Dell at third base to end the game.
Kahlig stuck out six batters while allowing just four hits and walking one. The effort dropped his ERA to 1.73 for the season.
“When he’s pitching, we seem to play with more confidence,” said Kaup. “He forced them to put the ball in play. He didn’t strike out a lot of guys, but he didn’t walk guys.”
The effort on the mound was backed by defense that was solid most of the day, with Hayden Pottkotter playing a key role in center field. He recorded all three put outs in the fourth inning, one in the fifth and two more in the sixth.
Boughman threw out Jake Allen trying to steal second base in the third inning and picked Topp off of first in the sixth.[[In-content Ad]]