Wildcats erase early deficit to win Game 2

Caleb Medicraft limited the Halifax Pelham Canadians to four singles and the Kentville Wildcats came up with some timely hits en route to a 10-2 victory Sunday.

Kentville now has a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League final, but the Wildcats aren’t getting ahead of themselves.

“We have to stay ... focused and we have to keep the intensity up,” Kentville’s playermanager John Ansara said after the victory at Kentville Memorial Park. “That’s a really good team over there. Tonight’s game could have gone either way. We got a couple of bloops and it broke things open. If we don’t get those, we’re in a tight game.”

Halifax manager Grant Mackinnon’s message to his club after the contest was simple.

“They didn’t play senior baseball,” he said, noting both mental and physical mistakes cost them. While the scoreboard showed four Halifax errors, Mackinnon said that was generous. “We’re not going to win any (games) playing that kind of baseball.”

Halifax struck first with two runs in the top of the second inning on a Ryan O’toole single and shortstop Codey Shrider’s error.

The home side got one back in their half of the inning when Kyle Armsworthy singled, went to second on an error, advance another 90 feet on a wild pitch and scored on Brett Mcginnis’ single.

“The boys answered right away,” said Armsworthy, a Lower Sackville native.

“We have a lot of guys on that team with a lot of character and it’s nice to see everybody step up and do their job.”

The Wildcats took the lead in the third when Shrider walked and advanced to third when a pickoff throw ended up down the right-field line.

“He’s one of our best base runners, he reads the plays really well and he’ll push plays like that,” said Ansara, noting the play swung momentum to the home side.

Shrider scored when catcher Jack Berrigan’s throw to first, trying to complete a strikeout, was off the mark. Brandon Mckay then singled to plate Colby Turple with the eventual game-winning run.

Kentville put the game out of reach with a five-run fourth inning that included a Shrider sacrifice fly, a Matt Johnson run-scoring bloop single over the draw-in infield, Turple’s RBI single, Mckay’s run-scoring groundout and a wild pitch that plated Dryden Schofield.

Bases loaded walks to Armsworthy and Mcginnis in the sixth inning rounded out the scoring.

Noah Trider had two singles for Halifax while Brandon Devlin had the other to leadoff the game.

Cam Ritcey was tagged with the loss after giving up eight runs on eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. His teammates made four errors behind him. Ritcey struck out four, walked two and hit a batter.

Medicraft struck out six, including two in each of the final two innings. He walked two and hit a batter. He only gave up one hit after the second inning.

Game 3 is Tuesday in Halifax.