By Paul Vozzella
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
The offensive woes continued for the Rockets on Wednesday as they failed to produce a run against Wellesley, falling 9-0, moving their record to 2-7.
It wasn’t until the fourth inning that Needham was able to record its first hit of the game. Senior William O’Donnell singled on a hard line drive up the middle of the field and eventually advanced to second base on a passed ball but that’s as far as he would
get around the base path before the third out of the inning.
In the final inning of the game, Needham finally got a base runner on third base. Senior Andrew Koplan singled on a line drive to advance junior Lincoln Pollack but the next batter struck out, ending the game.
“That also comes back to putting the ball in play,” said head coach CJ Golbranson on turning opportunities into runs scored. “We get guys in scoring position with less than two outs, but we can't have strikeouts during those situations… Coming back to it, we got to just put the ball on the ground. [There were] a lot of pop flies today, and that's not going to move any runners over at the varsity level. You got to get the ball on the ground.”
Sophomore William Cassidy got the ball on the mound to start the game for Needham and gave his time a formidable 4.1 innings pitched. It took a little bit for Cassidy to get settled in as he walked the first two batters he faced. Wellesley would later score its first run of the game on a sacrifice fly.
The top of the second inning saw a couple blunders lead to a scoring threat again. The first Wellesley batter reached second base after a deep fly ball to the outfield was dropped. The runner later advanced to third base on a passed ball but two strikeouts from Cassidy and a weak groundout got the Rockets out of the inning.
In the following inning, Cassidy allowed back-to-back singles to the first two batters. A passed ball would push them into scoring position and, with another sacrifice fly, Wellesley crossed home plate for the second time in the game.
After a clean fourth inning and allowing two base runners in the fifth inning, Golbranson made a call for relief, substituting senior William Saratella into pitch. He was unable to get Needham out of the innings unscathed, however, as two more runs would score for
Wellesley.
The Raiders scored another run in the sixth inning and tacked on four more runs in the seventh inning.
“It's going to be up to me to get these guys up to where they need to be, but it's also on the captains to make sure when I'm not around that they keep these guys locked in, in the dugout,” said Golbranson on turning the team around. “We need guys that are going
to be locked in, whether they're in the game or not.”
