SUNAPEE- Lakers baseball exploded on offense, scoring 8 over the first three innings, and racking up 10 in the fourth including a grand-slam from senior Nick Ducharme to beat Nute 18-0 on Thursday evening’s senior game.
In the bottom of the first, Ducharme picked up an RBI on a shot to deep left-center that was dropped. Matt Nangeroni and Darren Hulton followed that up with back-to-back RBI-triples to right field. A Sean Shisko sac-fly that scored Hulton gave the Laker the lead, 4-0 after one inning of play. In the bottom of the second, the Lakers plated a run on a passed-ball and Lane Smith had an RBI-single to go up 6-0. And, in the third they would add two more. Jack Cooney knocked one in with a bunt and senior Cade Robinson scored another with a sac-fly. Lakers led 8-0 after three.
In the bottom of the fourth, the Lakers put their foot on the gas, scoring ten runs in the inning. They scored five runs on RBI-singles, one on a bases-loaded walk, and four on a grand-slam over the left field fence off the bat of Ducharme. On the grand-slam, Sunapee head coach, Tom Frederick, said, “It was his first home-run on this field in his career. So it’s kinda neat… his last at-bat was his first home-run here and it was a grand-slam. That’s a good way to end your senior year. It was fun to see.”
In the top of the fifth, after forcing a groundout, Gabe Hastings put the Rams away with the mercy rule on back-to-back punch-outs. On the day, Hastings struck out 11 batters in just five innings of work. “Gabe pitched a great game… no walks, one hit and was around the plate all day,” said Frederick. “He threw a ton of strikes… the curveball was working awesome.”
The Lakers’ two seniors, Cade Robinson and Nick Ducharme, end their home-careers with a memorable blowout win. On his two seniors, Frederick said, “They’re great guys to have on the team. They have showed some good leadership throughout the year. They’ve both had really solid senior years. I’m sure the win-loss isn’t what they hoped it would be, but they’ve kept level heads and helped the other young guys to learn the process to try to be successful. In their four-year career, they’ve went to the finals twice and the semifinals once… and hopefully we make some noise this year. We have the ability to as a team, we’re just going to have to play well.”
Sunapee finishes the year with a record of 9-7 and will most likely be the nine-seed in the upcoming NHIAA Divison IV tournament.
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