GLENVILLE, W.Va. — Notre Dame won for the fifth time in seven games on Wednesday night, shutting out No. 6 Gilmer County 4-0 as junior pitcher Elias Gordon struck out 11 on the mound.
“They’re the No. 6 team in the state and it just feels real good to come out here and get the win,” Gordon said. “For me, it’s mostly my mechanics. I’m throwing well when I can keep the ball low and get my curveball going to work in with my fastball.”
And Gordon did just that for six and two-thirds innings, scattering a pair of hits, but had to exit the mound prior to the final out after hitting the 110-pitch limit.
“When he’s on, he as as good as I have,” said Notre Dame coach Jon Calvert. “His pitch count got up there, so I had to pull him. He did work behind batters, I wasn’t happy about that, but he battled back when he got behind. His stuff was phenomenal today.”
Notre Dame scored its first pair of runs in the third inning on a two-RBI double from Gordon. Another two-RBI double from Brent Robinson in the fourth gave the Irish a 4-0 cushion.
It was the second win over a top 10 team in the past week for Notre Dame (7-7), which defeated No. 9 Pendleton County last week 12-6.
“We can win a lot of ball games, but we left four or five runs on the field, easily,” Calvert said. “I didn’t have my seniors today, so I was down five guys, three big starters, and the young guys stepped up. This team is starting to gel. If we keep getting better, I really like our chances.”
Gilmer County (16-4) has now lost two of three after an impressive 12-game winning streak that went back to March 20.
“We started out hot with 10, 12 or 15 hits every game,” said Gilmer County coach Adrian Duelley. “We’re playing good defense and our pitching has been pretty good for the most part, but we have to make adjustments at the plate. We had maybe four guys on base total tonight. We have to put pressure on them and we didn’t do that.
“It was nice having 10 games in early on during the season when other teams had only played two or three games,” he continued. “Teams are going to get better when they practice and keep playing. We’ve got to continue to do that too and adjust. We’ll be fine, but we’ve got to bounce back.”
Dalton Rose got the start on the mound for Gilmer County, giving up four runs on six hits, while Jacob Persinger threw two and one-third innings of relief.
The game was originally scheduled to be played at Frank Loria Field in Clarksburg, but moved to Glenville after flooding earlier this week damaged the newly placed turf, displacing the Irish from their home field.
“It’s been adversity all year long,” Calvert said. “We had a fire in the press box. I told the kids we’ve had fire, brimstone, floods — I’m just waiting on locusts next. But nothing seems to get us down. I’ve tried to stay positive with it. It is what it is. I think it will make us tougher.
“They’ve looked at the field and are going to give us options as to what to do,” he continued. “It’s definitely fixable. The problem is that flood hit five days after it was down – we had other stuff we wanted to do to it that we were planning on doing after the season.”