Clyde, Hershey upset state-ranked Columbian

Clyde baseball coach Drew Linder likes to rotate his catchers, but right now there's no way he can take sophomore Blake Hershey out of the lineup. Hershey has begun the season 12-for-23 (.522), his latest outburst a 3-for-4 day with a home run and four runs batted in as the Fliers went on the road and handed state-ranked Tiffin Columbian its first loss, 5-3, on Friday night. After beginning the season 0-5 against a tough slate of opponents, Clyde (3-5, 1-1 SBC Lake) has rattled off three consecutive wins. "We were playing some tough teams, but we were just trying to find our groove, find ourselves," Linder said via phone after the win in Tiffin. Hershey entered Friday already scorching hot, coming off a 3-for-3 day with five RBI in a win Thursday night against Oak Harbor. In the top of the first in Tiffin, Dillon Overmyer walked and Mason Gurney reached on an error to set up Hershey with two on and two out. On a 2-1 count, Hershey crushed the ball to left field, where Columbian has a fence that's about the height of three standard fences. It wasn't high enough to stop Hershey's blast. "It's ridiculous," Linder said. "... It was an absolute tracer to dead left." Clyde scored again in the fourth when Brady Hickman delivered out of the 9-spot to drive home Will Lozier with a single. In the fifth, it was Hershey again, this time singling to centerfield to bring home Kaiden Olson to tally his 11th RBI of the season. "I knew he would contribute," Linder said of Hershey. "... But he's just taken off, man, it's unbelievable as a sophomore." The Fliers kept that lead thanks to ace Eian Howey's complete game on the mound. The southpaw threw 106 pitches, allowing eight hits and three runs while striking out five. "Had some better offspeed today," Linder said of Howey. "Tiffin's a very solid hitting team." Howey made one bad pitch, Linder said, an 0-2 offering to returning All-Ohio player Jaden Myers that the Columbian senior crushed for a two-run home run in the third. Tiffin's other run came on a Bryce Roggow RBI hit in the fifth to score Myers. The Tornadoes (5-1, 1-1) opposed Howey with Bryce Roggow, who went 5.2 innings. Brayden Tucker got two outs out of the pen, then standout senior Carson Mellott struck out two batters with bases loaded in the top of the seventh to give the Tornadoes one final chance. Howey, who threw a complete game Monday against Perkins, worked a 1-2-3 seventh, though, getting a groundout to Overmyer, a strikeout, and then a grounder back to himself for a toss to first. Clyde's opening eight-game slate has included Millbury Lake, Bowling Green, Edison, Shelby, Perkins, Mohawk, Oak Harbor and now Columbian, not an easy game among those. Even with that in mind, Linder certainly wouldn't have drawn things up with an 0-5 start. But the Fliers are now 3-5 and streaking, not to mention that they've thrown another wrench into the early SBC Lake Division standings after Sandusky's upset of Norwalk on Thursday. Clyde and its standout sophomore Hershey don't plan on slowing down. "We're playing great baseball right now," Linder said. "Hopefully we can keep it rolling. Eventually we're gonna catch a bad break here or there. We've just got to continue to push through and play well." Clyde 300 110 0 — 5 7 1Columbian 002 010 0 — 3 8 1 WP: Eian Howey. LP: Bryce Roggow 2B: (C) Kaiden Olson; (TC) Jaden Myers. HR: (C) Blake Hersey; (TC) Jaden Myers