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Sports

Solon Baseball Off to a Smashing Start

Smoral, Esborn lead Comets to Opening Day victory

Opening Day in baseball is supposed to be warm, sweet and full of optimism as a new season begins, not cold and off-putting with temperatures hovering in the high 30s.

For Solon’s baseball team, though, Tuesday’s chill felt more like a cool breeze from the south. For Valley Forge, it was the North Pole. With 15 runs separating them, the reason for the team’s different dispositions under adverse conditions wasn’t hard to discern.

Getting little warmth from a bright sun, Solon junior pitcher Matt Smoral found his own source of energy as he threw four innings of shutout ball as part of a no-hitter and senior Eric Esborn smacked a third-inning grand slam as the Comets routed Valley Forge, 15-0, in four and a half innings in their home and season opener at Solon Community Park.

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The 6-foot-8 left-hander Smoral (1-0) had eight strikeouts, while Pat Vogel pitched the top of the fifth inning and punched out the game’s final two batters for the no-hitter.  Patriot starter Justin Schnur (0-1) took the loss for Valley Forge (0-1).

Last season, the Comets shared the Valley Division title of the Northeast Ohio Conference with Twinsburg and unexpectedly lost to Cuyahoga Falls in a Division I sectional semifinal.

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“With the nine seniors we had graduating, we were starting to begin the transformation from an offensive team to a pitching and defensive team,” Solon coach Damien Kopkas said. “I knew with the pitchers we had coming back from last year’s team and the juniors coming up from JV that the pitching was going to be one of our strengths.”

Esborn had seven RBI and went 3-for-4 falling a triple short of the cycle with a grand slam, double and single. Jesse Circelli went 2-for-3 with an RBI and Anthony DeMarco went 2-for-2 with two RBI. Alex Giterman went 2-for-2 with a pair of singles and an RBI. Ryan Schwenke went 2-for-3 with a single and double and three RBI. Elliott Wood had an RBI double to open the game’s scoring.

Needless to say, the season couldn’t have started any better, especially with Esborn’s slugging.

“The last two years, he’s been over .400 in hits for power, hits in the clutch. He’s been asked to play a pretty tough role. When the game’s on the line or there’s a big situation, more often than not, he’s been successful,” Kopkas said.

For Smoral, it’s been a nice road back. Last year, he had a stress fracture in his foot during February tryouts that kept him out of action until the final weeks of the season. When Smoral returned, he mostly pitched in relief with a strict pitch count.

Coach Kopkas will monitor Smoral, but he sees him as his top pitcher for the season. And after Tuesday afternoon’s performance, how couldn’t he?

Smoral almost had a perfect day, but it had one neat quirk. Smoral’s eight strikeouts featured him punching out the first two batters of each inning, but not the third. Teammate Vogel flip-flopped Smoral’s feat in striking out the final inning’s last two batters. Smoral was at a loss to explain the anomaly.

“I don’t know, I couldn’t finish it off,” a laughing Smoral said. “In the first two or three innings, I was going with the fastball. I started mixing in the off-speed and it helped out a second-time through. I don’t know about the third guy.”

Solon next travels to North Royalton for a 4:30 p.m. start today.

BOX SCORE

1 2 3 4 5
R H E Valley Forge 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 Solon 0 6 7 2 -
15 13 0

PITCHING

Schnur (L, 0-1).  Smoral (W, 1-0).

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