Young Portagers drop two in season opener

By DYLAN SAVELA
Manistee News AdvocateSports Writer

Published: Wednesday, April 13, 2011

ONEKAMA — Onekama coach John Neph took a few seconds to count his fielders midway through Tuesday’s doubleheader against Lake City.

There were nine out there, but Neph was interested in how many of those were returners from last year. He counted as high as one.

“The positive thing is we had a bunch of young guys get on the varsity field tonight,” said Neph, whose Portagers dropped both games of their season-opener to the Trojans. “This is a learning experience. Whatever the score ended up being, what we had to do is play as hard as we could and that’s what we did. We made some mistakes, but like I said, this is new to a lot of these guys.”

Onekama dropped the opener 7-4 and the nightcap 21-10, both going five innings. "That's where we're at," Neph said after the pair of losses. "This is the starting line for us. We're going to keep moving forward.

The Portagers’ Stephen Verrett got the start in the opener and threw for the full five innings, allowing just two earned runs on three hits and six walks to go with six strikeouts.

“I thought the pitching was fine today,” Neph said. “Stephen’s a kid who’s been pitching for two years with us now and wants to pitch, so we gave him the opening day start. And he threw well.”

After the Portagers took a 1-0 lead at the end of the first inning, Lake City put up two of their own in the second and four in the third. Onekama cut the gap to 6-4 with a three-run bottom of the fourth, but were unable to get any closer.

“We’re way behind on seeing live pitching,” Neph said. “But we’ll get there.”

Onekama’s Tanner Kott led the way at the plate in the opener, batting 1-for-2 with two RBIs and a run scored while Joe Eno went 1-for-3 with a double and a run scored.

In the nightcap, the Trojans were paced by big innings at the plate, scoring five runs in the first as well as seven apiece in the second and fifth to keep their distance.

“We’ve got to get right back working on the things we kind of have been so far — defensive situations and situational base running, and the key word there of course is situations,” Neph said of limiting the damage. “And that’s to be expected with the first game, when you haven’t been able to simulate everything you’re going to see.”

Sophomore Bryce Reckow got the start for the Portagers in the second game and, while allowing just three earned runs on five hits with four strikeouts and a walk in two innings, fielding errors bit Onekama early.

Nolan Miller relieved Reckow for the final three innings, and gave up seven earned runs on six hits to go with two strikeouts.

The Portagers upped their production at the plate from the opening game by scoring seven runs in the first two innings, but wasn’t able to rally in the late innings.

Kott went 2-for-3 with two RBIs and a run, Eno was 2-for-4 with a pair of RBIs, Reckow was 1-for-2 with three runs scored, Curtis McKenney was 1-for-2 with a double and an RBI while Miller was 1-for-3 with an RBI.