By Mike Bowen
FAIRMONT — Fairmont Senior head coach Steve Naternicola was looking for his Polar Bear baseball team to get up for Thursday’s Region I, Section 3 championship game against North Marion.
The two teams split the first two games of the series, both of which were closely contested.
But it was a different story.
The Polar Bears looked like the team that has won sectional titles for the last eight years in a 10-0 defeat of the upstart Huskies to claim the sectional title at Mary Lou Retton Park.
“It was a big difference,” Naternicola said. “The kids showed up today. North Marion played great the last two games, I was just hoping we’d come out today with a little fire, and the guys stepped up.”
Andrew Marra took the hill for the Polar Bears and provided the lift his team needed, much as North’s Cory Jones did in game two.
Marra went all five innings, allowing no runs on two hits. He walked one and struck out four.
“Andrew went out there and threw strikes,” Naternicola said. “He let his defense do the work behind him, and that’s what you’ve got to do. It’s not an individual sport. You can’t rely on one guy to get everyone out or to get all the hits.”
The Polar Bears struck early and often.
Marra led off the bottom of the first with a walk and moved up on Trevor Malnick’s single. Shane Valentine loaded the bases after being hit by a pitch, and Gage Chichester drew a bases-loaded walk to score the first run of the game.
Allen Rickards followed with an RBI ground out, and Mike Ice drove in a pair of runs with a single.
Fairmont then put five more runs on the board in the third inning.
Rickards led off the inning with a double. Jamie Allard walked, and Levi Pawich scored Rickards with a single. Marra followed with a two-run double. Franklin Wilson capped the inning with a two-run home run.
“We had a lot of guys hit the ball today,” Naternicola said. “We had eight different guys score runs. That’s what it takes to win games; everybody has to contribute.”
The Polar Bears finished off the game in the fifth inning when Allard led off with a single and moved to second on Pawich’s sacrifice bunt. Allard then went to third on a passed ball and scored when Malnick’s two-out grounder was misplayed.
The Polar Bears improved to 17-7 and will move on to face rival East Fairmont in the Region I semifinal on Monday, May 25 at Mary Lou Retton Park.
The Huskies end the season with a 13-13 record, their best record in the past several years.
“It’s nice to move on,” Naternicola said. “It’s become something of a tradition with our seniors. This is our eighth in a row, and the kids don’t want to be a team that breaks that streak.”
E-mail Mike Bowen at mbowen@timeswv.com.
