Mar 24, 2016 2 min read

BELLE VERNON – Belle Vernon opened its baseball season with an 11-1 win over Trinity in five innings Thursday night at the John DiVirgilio Sports Complex.

“I am pleased with how we played, especially considering we still have a couple of players out,” Belle Vernon coach Daryl Hixenbaugh said. “It was the first game but we want to keep it going from here.”

Trinity coach Matt McCartney shared his thoughts.

“We weren’t able to make the plays we needed to,” he said. “But the guys worked hard and we will keep working on things and learn from this.”

After retiring Trinity 1-2-3 in the top of the first inning, the Leopards wasted no time in jumping on the Hillers by scoring four runs in the first and six more in the second.

In the first, Belle Vernon had three hits and took advantage of two Hillers errors and a hit batsman.

Jordan Zilka had an RBI-triple and Jake Callaway had an RBI-double in the inning.

The Leopards put the game out of reach in the second inning when they had four hits and took advantage of another Trinity miscue.

Josh Hoffman had a one-out double and then Zilka, Evan Hannan, Jesse Hartman, and Deven Judy all followed with two-out singles to blow the game open.

In the fourth, Blake Rohrbacker scored the lone run for Trinity on a Belle Vernon error.

The Leopards ended the game when Zilka’s single drove in Tim Labuda to enforce the10-run rule in the fifth inning.

Trinity committed seven errors.

Matt Benicky went the distance on the mound for the Leopards and gave up two hits while recording two strikeouts and issuing three walks.

“I am impressed with how Benicky threw and he pitched really well,” Hixenbaugh said. “He did a good job and we mashed the ball.”

For Belle Vernon, Zilka (triple and two singles), Hannan, (three singles), Labuda (single and double) and Hoffman all had multiple hits.