Panthers roar to 11th straight win Tuesday
The latest power surge by the O'Fallon Panthers baseball squad has fueled an 11-game winning streak which continued Tuesday afternoon with a 17-0 dismantling of the East St. Louis Flyers.
It took just five innings for Panthers Coach Jason Portz' crew to register their 22nd victory of the season against just six losses as they exploded for 11 first inning runs to quickly dispatch the Flyers.
Home runs by Nick Tindall and John Pilackis ignited the OTHS attack, but everyone got into the action with balls flying into every gap and every quadrant of Blazier Field.
Senior Chris Hewitt was the recipient of the major run support, picking up the win with a no-hit effort in his two innings of work. Tindall added a double to increase his RBI total for the game to four and was nearly equaled by Dakota Curlee, who banged out two hits in two plate appearances and drove in three runners.
The East St. Louis win came on the heels of O'Fallon's second productive northern swing in as many weeks and a 14-4 shellacking of Belleville Althoff on Monday.
Last Friday afternoon, the Panthers loaded the bus and headed to Metamora for an early evening contest. The long bus ride didn’t faze the OTHS crew as they pounded out 22 hits in another laugher, winning 22-7.
Despite the final margin of victory, the Panthers were faced with an uphill battle early as Metamora plated four runs in the bottom of the first. By the time O'Fallon finished their plate appearance in the top of the third frame, however, they had erased the early deficit, taking a 6-4 lead.
The early scoring was just a prelude to O'Fallon's best offensive inning of the season. In the top of the fifth, the Panthers batted around - twice - scoring 16 runs in a display of offensive prowess that blew the Metamorans out of the water. Although not quite as devastating, the Panthers still had plenty of firepower on Saturday when they faced Bartonville Limestone in a baseball showcase event held in Peoria - the "Statewide Showdown".
Again the OTHS squad was able to post a crooked number in the top of the fourth when five Panthers crossed the plate to erase a 4-2 Limestone lead. Instrumental in the Panthers' offensive success, Dakota paced the OTHS attack and drew kudos from his coach in the process.
"Dakota went 5-for-8 over the weekend. He is our leader," said Panther mentor Jason Portz. "He plays an outstanding centerfield and has had great consistency at the plate. Dakota has been a player that, in the past, has been very hard on himself when he didn’t succeed. This year, however, he has matured and become the player that we all knew he was capable of becoming. He is a very tough player - one of the toughest, hard-nosed players that I have coached. He brings a blue collar work ethic to our team and it has spread to all other players around him."
The Panthers most recent string of triumphs began with a critical SWC victory over Belleville West, 6-1, last Thursday. O'Fallon runners were all over the basepaths in their rematch against the Maroons. West had defeated the Panthers early in the season in league play.
This time around, however, the Panthers had an answer, benefiting from seven walks and two hit batsmen to cruise past the Maroons.
Nick Johnson led off the second inning with a home run. A perfectly executed squeeze bunt by Caleb Piatt and a RBI single by Dakota Curlee extended the O'Fallon lead to 3-0 before the inning ended.
A Miles Quintal single, a theft of home by John Pilackis on the back end of a double-steal and Sonnie Rollins scampering home on a wild pitch helped the Panthers put some distance between themselves and their SWC adversaries - enough of a cushion for Quintal to notch the victory - his seventh in eight decisions.
