Sagemont Makes Early Statement In District 3A-14 With 7-3 Win Over Highlands

The Sagemont Lions have not had much success in district play the past few seasons. That is what makes what happened at Highlands Christian much sweeter for the visitors. Sagemont got a three-run homer from Eddy Milian in the first and then cruised to a 7-3 victory over the Knights in each team’s first district game of the season.

“The guys that have been here for the past three or four years, they’ve only one maybe one or two district games,” said Lions head coach Tommy Martinez. “Coming out right off the bat with Highlands, which is always a good team, and winning it, it’s just a feather in our cap.”

Milian was the offensive star of the evening, going 1-for-3, with the first-inning home run and a fifth-inning sacrifice fly. In all, the Lions’ clean-up hitter drove in four of the seven runs his team scored. In the first, Milian came to bat with Sean Iacono and David Vazquez on base. What happened next is something that fans have not seen a lot of this year so far with the new BBCOR bats draining much of the power from the game. Milian belted the three-run homer off the scoreboard in left-center.

“I was just trying to be aggressive,” said Milian. “It was my first at-bat of the regular season, and I was just looking for my pitch. It was early in the game, and I just wanted to get something going.”

Once Milian gave the Lions the lead, it was up to starter Andres Vazquez to hold down the Knights offense. The sophomore used an array of pitches in his 5.1 innings of work and held Highlands batters to just two hits. Vazquez did get into a couple of jams, but worked out of each without giving up the lead. In the fourth, Highlands scored once before Vazquez got the final two Knights hitters to pop up, stranding two.

The next inning, the Knights again threatened to make it a game when they scored two runs on an error, two walks, and a couple of RBI ground outs. Vazquez again worked out of trouble when he struck out Riley Strickland looking.

“Overall Andrew started off slow,” said Martinez. “But he kept hitting his spots, and he kept them off balance. He has that loosey-goosey arm, and he is a junk-ball pitcher, and tonight he was effective.”

Sagemont received several big performances to help them secure their first district win of the year. D. Vazquez was on base all four times he went to the plate, singling once, and having the rare distinction of being hit by pitch three times in a game. Junior James McDonnell added two hits and two runs for the Lions.

On the other side of the field, Knights head coach Bruce Charlebois understands that this season his team is going to go through some growing pains. Highlands only had 12 players in uniform Monday night, half of whom had never played in a varsity game coming into this season.

“We have a whole bunch of growing to do,” said Charlebois. “These guys need to gain experience, a lot of work in practice on basic fundamentals. We’ll go back to work, and we’re going to continue to honor God, and we’ll do the best we can moving forward.”

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