Cooper City Tops Northeast 6-3 In Gritty Battle

The dirt was flying at Davis Field on Friday evening as Northeast hosted Cooper City on on its dusty home field. The two Broward County baseball teams battled hard for seven innings, before the Cowboys rallied to a 6-3 victory.

The Cowboys capitalized on a couple of errors to score three decisive runs to grab the win. Senior leader Steve DiPuglia gathered his third RBI of the game in the crucial inning. DiPuglia ended the day going 4-for-4 with a run scored and three RBIs.

“We need to play every game tough,” DiPuglia said. “We are coming down to the final stretch here and we are trying to do some big things, Every game is important, whether it is a district game or not. The leaders on this team keep the team up no matter how the game is going. We saw tonight, we stuck with it, a few errors and it put us over the top.”

Cooper City came out of the blocks quickly. In the first inning, DiPuglia hit a shot down the left field line for a double. It was misplayed and DiPuglia ended up on third base. With an exhibition of well-placed hitting, Robert Shanley followed with an opposite-field sacrifice fly, putting Cooper City ahead 1-0.

Northeast starting pitcher Aaron Cooper cooled the Cowboy’s bats by striking out the next two batters to end the inning.

“Aaron is an exceptional player,” Northeast Manager Dave Hollingsworth said about his senior pitcher. “We use him everywhere. He has been pitching a ton of innings for us, as well as hitting and stealing bases.”

Cooper did just that as he led off for the Hurricanes in the bottom of the first. After drawing a walk, he stole second base. He came around to third on a passed ball and scored on an RBI ground out by sophomore shortstop Robert Robinson. Cooper City starting pitcher Angel Almonte did his own version of shutting down a rally by striking out two Hurricanes batters to end the first inning.

With the score tied 1-1, Northeast High (5-7) manufactured two runs in the bottom of the second. Taking advantage of a little wildness by Almonte, the Hurricanes scored the runs on two walks, a couple of wild pitches, a passed ball and an RBI ground out by Jon Jarboe.

Cooper City (8-4) came back in the top of the third with a run on an RBI single by DiPuglia to pull within a run of tying it back up. In the bottom of the third, Almonte regained his control and struck out the side. At this time, it looked like the pitchers were starting to control the action, as Aaron Cooper faced three Cowboy batters in the fourth and set them down without a run.

As Almonte took the mound in the fourth, he signaled to Manager Chris Delgado after he finished his warm ups. He told Delgado he was experiencing some pain on his right side and Delgado went immediately to his bull pen.

“Reliever Luis Maldonado was actually on his way to the bull pen to get ready, Delgado explained. “I was going to give Angel one more inning. As it worked out Luis was ready and he did a good job for us.”

Maldonado came on and pitched scoreless ball in the fourth and fifth innings for the Cowboys. Cooper City tied the score in the fifth on another RBI by DiPuglia. This time he drove a single to center field to plate sophomore Jack Schmidt with the tying run.

Delgado brought on one of his top closing pitchers, Tyler Sabine, to close out the Hurricanes and the ball game. Sabine did just that, earning the save.

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