Baseball: Cougars Even District Record

After starting district play 0-5, the Oakton High baseball team needed a sharp turnaround in the second half of the season to put itself in a good position for the Concorde District Tournament.

The Cougars entered Friday's game against the Westfield Bulldogs with four straight district wins under their belt to put their district record at 4-5.

On a night that started with a pregame ceremony celebrating the squad's seven seniors, it was a junior who blasted a game-winning two-run homer to lift the Cougars to a 4-2 victory over Westfield on Friday.

The Bulldogs got on the scoreboard first with two runs in the first inning, but starting pitcher Conor Flanagan and the Cougar defense battled to keep them from taking a large lead. 

"Conor did a good job of battling. They did get a couple good swings off but we also made some good defensive plays, too," Coach Justin Janis said.

The Cougars offense broke out in the third inning, starting with senior Tyler Caroll who laid down a bunt for a hit. Senior Dennis Cooney followed with a single, and junior Kyle Burger hit a sacrifice fly to move the runners to second and third base. Joey Bartosic, a junior, then had an RBI bunt single, and senior Mason Hauser put down a sacrifice bunt to score Cooney to tie the game. With Bartosic on second and two outs in the inning, junior Brian Burns hit a homer to straightaway center field to score the game-winning runs.  

For the rest of the game, the Cougars relied on solid pitching and defense to hold the Bulldogs at two runs. Senior R.J. Garcia pitched 4 2/3 innings in relief for six strikeouts.

"R.J. did an outstanding job tonight and we made the plays we needed to on defense," Janis said.

The win not only puts them at fourth in the Concorde standings, but also propels them into the district tournament next week as the team with the most momentum. 

"The guys did a really good job of basically never giving up this week," Janis said. "Even the games in the first half of the season, we were in just about all of them. ... It would have been easy for our guys to quit, but they didn't. I think that's a testament to the character of our guys."

Oakton will host Chantilly in the first round of the Concorde District Tournament at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.