by Michael Leonard

Sports Editor

Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy baseball coach Jerry Cowley had a feeling things could get crazy during his team's home-and-home series with Triway.

"A lot of their games have been high scoring and, obviously, so have a lot of ours," Cowley said. "The games played right to what we expected: a lot of great offense and sometimes not-so-great defense."

CVCA scored a 17-12 win over the Titans May 5 at home, but then dropped an 18-11 score at Triway May 7. Sandwiched between those two contest, CVCA dropped a home game to Kidron Central Catholic 11-4.

As a result, CVCA's record moved to 13-6, 8-2 in the Principal's Athletic Conference.

The split also moved Triway to 10-2 in the PAC-7, giving the Titans a share of the league title.

CVCA will need to sweep Tuslaw in their final PAC-7 series this week to claim a share of the title. The Royals will play May 14 at Tuslaw and May 16 at home against the Mustangs.

Game one of the series against Triway saw CVCA bang out 17 hits. That run support was plenty for starter Zak Knettel, who got the win and improved to 5-0 on the season.

Catcher Scott Tipton continued a tremendous hot streak at the plate. The Royals' captain went 4-of-4 with four doubles, four runs and two RBIs.

How hot has Tipton been? According to Cowley, after the Triway game, Tipton had reached base in 26 out of 27 plate appearances.

Sophomore Mat Copora aided the cause with a three-run home run for his fourth homer of year.

"Every spot in the order had a least one hit that game," Cowley said. "You can't ask for more than that."

Cowley said the game at Triway was a mirror image of the first game, but this time the Titans did most of the blasting.

"We were down seven and then got back into the game," Cowley said. "Then we were down six and got back into the game. The third time they got ahead, it was too late. I was happy we came back multiple times in what was a hostile environment. They were playing it like a championship game and they had a lot of students come out to cheer."

Junior Zach Butler took the loss, as he fell to 2-1.

Copora and Tipton led the offense again, as each had multi-hit, three RBI games.

Cowley said the timing of the Kidron Central Christian game lent itself to some experimentation.

"It's not a throwaway game by any means, because you want to win them all, but it was a really tough setup," Cowley said. "We were able to play a lot of players who hadn't seen much playing time."

CVCA ready for postseason

In addition to the games with Tuslaw, CVCA will open its Division III playoff run this week.

CVCA was given the No. 2 seed in the Division III Akron sectional tournament, giving the Royals a first round bye. CVCA was set to open its postseason at home May 13 at 4:30 p.m. against the winner of the James A. Garfield-Waterloo game. Results were not available at press time.

If victorious, the Royals will play in the district semifinals game May 19 at 4:30 p.m. at Strongsville High School. The Division III Strongsville district title game will be May 20 at 4:30 p.m.

E-mail: mleonard@recordpub.com

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