The Fair Grove Eagles rode the strong pitching performance of senior Coby Church to a 7-2 victory over the Marionville Comets on Thursday night. The Mid Lakes Conference matchup was moved to Fair Grove due to poor field conditions at Marionville after Wednesday’s rain.
Church threw seven strong innings, allowing Marionville just six hits and two earned runs, while striking out fourteen Comet batters.
“Coby Church pitched really well tonight,” said Marionville coach Jamie LaSalle. “We’ve seen a couple really good pitchers this year and I think he might be the best so far. He has a lot of movement and the speed was a little bit faster than what we’ve been used to so far, so it was pretty tough on hitters. He did an outstanding job.”
Marionville senior Jacob LaSalle started the game for the Comets and never did find his groove. Fair Grove left the bases loaded in the first inning, while scoring just one run. They loaded the bases again in the third, scoring a solo run. In the fourth inning, Eagle catcher Noah Arcinigas drew a leadoff walk to start the inning. A groundout and a hit batsman later, Church delivered the big blow, helping his own cause with a triple to right-center. The two RBIs would give him a five run lead, something he would not give up.
“We had a lead so I kept pitching and throwing strikes,” said Church. “It’s easier to pitch with a lead. Coming into today’s game I knew I needed to throw strikes and do my job. I knew the guys behind me had my back.”
Fair Grove made just two errors the whole game, one of which was caused by strong winds. Marionville played a strong defensive game, as well, with just one error. Marionville, though, only had one inning in which they got more than one hit, a testament to Church’s strong outing.
“Coby Church, he’s a senior for us, and he’s a gamer,” said Fair Grove coach Christian Overstreet. “This is his second start; with the success our basketball team had he joined us late. He had a great basketball season and he’s carried that over into baseball. He did a very good job of mixing speeds, and staying away from the heart of the plate and trying to work the black part of it. It was successful for him.”
Scoring two runs for Fair Grove was sophomore Arcinigas. Arcinigas also stole a base in the key fourth inning.
“We wanted to come into the game and have good at bats,” said Arcinigas. “We had really good pitching tonight and we executed well. We like to be really aggressive on the bases and take any chance that we get and that’s a big part of scoring runs.”
Church frustrated the Comet hitters throughout the game, getting four of them to strike out looking.
“We’ve been struggling a little bit to hit the baseball,” said LaSalle. “We’ve got a few guys coming out of it but not enough yet to string together a few hits. Seems like we’ll get bases
loaded and not be able to come up with a big hit. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, that starts to turn around and that makes a big difference in baseball.”
Overstreet was pleased with his battery’s performance.
“Coby can throw any pitch on any count and Noah’s going to be there to block it. When he hit the triple, that’s just a testament to him; he made an adjustment over the last couple days. In baseball, especially, you’re playing a game of failures and it’s easy to get away from those adjustments but he’s really staying within those adjustments. He was able to do that tonight.”
Fair Grove 7 Marionville 2
Fair Grove 101 320 0– 7
Marionville 000 020 0—2
