Whitehall baseball wins extra-innings thriller over Coopersville at R-P tournament; Vikes, Rockets both go 1-1

MUSKEGON — Whitehall showed its mental toughness Saturday at the Reeths-Puffer Round Robin Tournament, bouncing back from a frustrating end to the seventh inning to defeat Coopersville in the eighth, 3-2, and salvage a split of its two games.

Reeths-Puffer topped Whitehall 10-4 in the teams' first game, and Coopersville beat the Rockets 7-2 to close out the day.

Cody Manzo provided the winning play for Whitehall, laying down a sacrifice bunt to lead off the eighth inning (due to time limits, the game employed international rules and placed a runner on second for each team to start extra innings). When the Broncos committed an error trying to get pinch runner Madden Risner at third base, Risner was able to score.

Whitehall freshman Emmett Hecht was a big reason that run proved to be the winner. Hecht was pressed into duty on the mound when starting pitcher Evan Thomas was thrown out of the game for jawing at a Bronco batter he'd just struck out to end the seventh. (Thomas was previously called for a balk to bring the tying run in from third base.)

In the eighth, Coopersville's courtesy runner stole third base, but when Hecht induced a fly ball deep enough to him, he left the base early and was called out on appeal. Hecht gave up a single to the next batter bot got a popout to end the inning.

"He's a kid that doesn't need a lot of warmup," Whitehall coach Brian Peets said of Hect. "I had him warming up the first game because I wasn't sure if I was going to use him or not, so he knows that he could be called at any point in the game. For a freshman, he's really got a lot of good baseball knowledge. I've got a couple Swiss army knives on the team that can just do everything, and Emmett can."

Manzo, who caught the game, said he and the other Viking defenders made sure to let Hecht know when he came into the game on short notice that they "had his back."

"We just told him, go throw strikes and we'll have your back as a team," Manzo said. "That's a tough situation. As a team out in the field, (we know) pitching is one of the hardest things to do in all of sports, so we told him we had his back. He made some great pitches, and some of our guys made some outstanding plays out in the field."

The Vikes got on the board early when Manzo got an infield single and came around to score on two groundouts and an error. That was the last time Whitehall had a runner on base until the fifth, when it responded to a Coopersville run by scoring again. Noah Peterson led off the fifth with a double and scored when the Broncos committed an error on Justin Jensen's sacrifice bunt.

Peets was pleased with his team's mental toughness in the late innings of the game, comparing it favorably to the Vikes' response to tough situations earlier in the season.

"The first half of the year, if we got down 5-6 runs early, our heads were down, shoulders slumped, and we would just get run off the field," Peets said.

Early in the season the team was unable to practice outside much due to weather, but since a four-day week of practices, the team has improved on and off the field, Peets added.

Manzo is one of few seniors on the team, and Peets has been impressed with his leadership and coachability; he said Manzo already knew when he led off the eighth that he'd be asked to bunt.

"Cody is a coach's dream for a kid to play for (him)," Peets said. "He'll do anything you ask. It's always, 'Yes, sir,' 'Yep, I'll do it,'...(I) saw we had Manzo up, and he knows. He's like, 'I'll put this one down to first base.' He just knows. He reads my mind ahead of time, which is great. He's a great kid, a great teammate and a great athlete."

The R-P vs. Whitehall game was a tight one most of the way, and the Vikings tied it 4-4 in the fourth inning, but the Rockets got the lead again in the bottom of the inning, then put the game away with five runs in the fifth as the Vikings struggled with infield defense. Tyler Sykes had the go-ahead hit for R-P in the fourth, a RBI double. He got two hits in the game, as did Jack Yonkman and Jaxon Lee. Lee scored three runs and drove in two.

Manzo had two hits against the Rockets, and Thomas did as well. Thomas drove in two runs.

R-P fell behind early in its matchup with Coopersville and could never recover, despite matching the Broncos in hits, 9-9. Sykes and Ethan Frang had two hits apiece.