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By Brian Kalish

Pittsville– There’s an old adage about how to be successful on offense in baseball: Hit ‘em where they ain’t.  Unfortunately, the Pittsville Panthers had a lot of difficulty squaring up Newman pitching and finding holes in the Fighting Cardinals’ defense in bone-chilling cold Monday evening at Riverside Park in Pittsville.  Pittsville dropped the Marawood South Conference game 7-2.  The Panthers fall to 2-2 in conference play, while Newman improves to 3-0.

The Panthers were only able to muster 4 hits on offense and committed two more errors on defense– a somewhat troubling trend that has emerged in Pittsville’s last couple of games.  Head coach Bill Urban gave credit to Newman starting pitcher Luke Prososki, who handcuffed Panther batters all evening, but said that his team needs simply needs to improve its level of play.

“I’ve coached for 20 years and the big thing right now– every team you coach, you try to take them up to the next level,” Urban said.  ”We haven’t done it.  We’re playing at the same level as when we played our first game.  I mean, here we are in our ninth game of the year.  I’m looking for this team to kick it another half step up, which you should be seeing this time of year.

“We have to be mentally tough.  When it’s bases loaded and we’ve got a 3-1 count, we have to be looking fastball.  To me, that’s a mental part– not sitting and taking it right down the middle.  I don’t think we’re playing bad baseball, but I don’t think we’re playing good baseball either.  As a coaches, we have to figure out how to get the team to gel.”

Pittsville’s two runs came in the fourth inning when Ryan Schwanebeck, who reached on an error, scored on an RBI single by Chris Downs.  Downs was then driven in on a fielder’s choice by Andy Fox.  Urban said that starting pitcher Chris Downs had an decent outing.  Downs gave up two earned runs in three innings of work, before Urban turned the ball over to Sawyer Ladick.  Ladick pitched well, giving up only one earned run.

“I thought Chris pitched good enough to keep us in the game,” Urban said.  ”But we had a couple of bad errors and we’re just not getting good at bats.”

The Panthers won’t have much time to dwell on the loss against Newman.  Pittsville travels to Stratford tomorrow afternoon for another important conference game.  Pittsville beat Stratford on Friday by the score of 4-0.

Panther Notes: In case you were wondering, yes, it was cold.  Really cold.  The concession stand seemed to be doing a brisk business selling coffee and hot chocolate…  Members of the Panthers softball team again came over to support the baseball team once their own game with Newman had concluded.