St. Thomas Bounces Back With Tight Win Over CS Charter

The St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders (10-6) are used to relying on their strong pitching staff and keen defense to win ballgames, and that recipe for success once again paid off Thursday night on the road against Coral Springs Charter (10-7).

The Raiders actually came into the game off an uncharacteristic 12-2 loss to Flanagan on Wednesday and were in need of a get-well game. Notre Dame commit Noah Greenseid started the evening off with four no-hit innings but was pulled from the game with an elevated pitch count. He hit a batter and walked three but was still extremely effective throughout the night. Raiders manager Joey Wardlow used the duo of right-hander Wyatt Iben and lefty Alexander Llinas to close out the rest of the 2-0 victory.

“The pitching bounced back today,” Wardlow said. “I think we gave up two hits and got around to throwing strikes toward the end. We played some defense and the pitchers got the job done.”

It’s the second straight game that St. Thomas has been limited to a two-spot on the scoreboard, but Wardlow is confident that his squad will put up better numbers soon enough. To their credit, the Raiders managed nine hits against the Panthers. It’s just that none of them ended up bringing home a run.

“What we need to do is keep up this level of pitching and defense,” he said. “If we get some more timely hitting, we put more runs up. And that’s going to come we just need to keep working at it and working on our two-strike approach. When that comes around we’re going to be able to take a little pressure off our pitchers.”

The win puts St. Thomas at 10-6 overall, but that record may not accurately reflect how good of a team the Raiders are. Twelve of STA’s 16 opponents this season have a winning record and the tough schedule has prepared them for whatever tense situation might come up during the playoffs.

“Coral Springs Charter held us down tonight to two runs,” said Wardlow, “and every week we’re seeing a good pitcher or a good team. The plan is that playing all of these competitive teams will hopefully pay off if we make it deep into the district and regional tournaments.”

Next week, St. Thomas will look to put some runs up against Monarch (6-4) and Calvary Christian Academy (5-9).

On the other side of the diamond, the loss is a tough pill to swallow for Coral Springs Charter manager Charlie Fine. His team has played well all season, his pitching staff did everything that was asked of them and there were plenty of opportunities to score on the night despite facing solid pitching throughout the game.

“We had a lot of quality at-bats today,” Fine said. “Our pitchers threw amazing. I mean, we held St. Thomas to zero earned runs. You hold a program as consistently talented as St. Thomas to zero earned runs and you’ve got to win the ball game. We must’ve had six or seven runners in scoring position over the game, and we just couldn’t get a hit with them out there. We had a lot of good today, but things just didn’t go our way.”

Carson Dircks worked the first four innings of the game for Coral Springs Charter. He took the loss after an unearned run crossed in the second, and the second unearned run that Fine mentioned came in the sixth on a play at the plate that bounced out of the catcher’s glove as a slide took him down. Aidan Tarshis was on the mound at that point for the Panthers and Hunter Stolov came in next. Those two breaks turned out to be decisive in this one as Charter failed to get the big hit when it was needed most.

“I thought for the most part we had really good approaches,” Fine said. “Our two bad approaches came in big spots and we didn’t quite get the ball to fall, but I think four innings ended with a ball being hit really hard at somebody. Sometimes that happens in this game and that’s the frustrating part. You just have to hope it evens itself out next week.”

Coral Springs hosts district rival Pine Crest (4-10-1) on Tuesday before traveling to Nova (5-10) on Wednesday. Both teams might not have intimidating records, but Fine is having his team prepare for what he believes will be two battles. Coming out on the right side of those two games should have the Panthers prepped for a showdown with Flanagan (13-6) later in the month.

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