TRENTON — Kerry Snyder Jr. had Friday night highlighted on the schedule.
“I was preparing for this one all week,” the Ross High School senior pitcher said. “I just could not wait for this one.”
Snyder tossed up a lead-off home run in the first inning before taming the rest of the Edgewood Cougars, and Ben Voegele went 2-for-4 with three RBIs to help lead the visiting Rams to a 4-2 Southwestern Buckeye League Southwestern Division victory.
Ross prevented the season sweep having lost at home to Edgewood 3-1 on Wednesday.
“I had to catch that day, and we took a tough loss,” Snyder said. “But then I knew we’d come out and bounce back.”
The Rams (4-3, 1-1 SWBL Southwestern), who have won three of their last four, had a five-game winning streak against the Cougars (6-4, 3-1 SWBL Southwestern) before Wednesday’sloss.
Snyder gave up a home run to Edgewood senior Nick Kelhoffer to start the bottom of the first, and the Cougars tallied another run later in the inning on Zach Boyle’s single that scored Haydon Simonds.
Snyder held Edgewood in check through the sixth inning.
“I felt great. It was a little windy,” Snyder said. “The first pitch of the game? Eh. But it felt good. I had all of my pitches going into the game. Everything was working for me, and I went out there and did my job.”
Voegele, a University of Cincinnati commit, drove in Brady Gillespie and Gavin Burns — who reached on walks — to tie it at 2-2 in the fourth.
Sophomore Wyatt Bulach scored on a wild pitch and Voegele brought home junior Bryce Fulmer to give the Rams a two-run cushion in the fifth.
“This group is young,” Ross coach Brad Voegele said. “They’re taking some lumps, but I hope at the end of the day it’s going to pay off. A game like this is big. That’s a good team. They’re well-coached. They do a lot of really good things. It’s a good win for us.
“When we can figure out some of our bats, we’re going to be really good. But we’ve got opportunities with guys in scoring position, and we just have to get that big hit. We did today, and that’s the difference. That’s going to be the biggest thing with us. With any team, it’s that. With us, we’re getting guys on and moving them over. Now, we’ve got to get big RBIs.”
Edgewood is in its first season under new coach Austin Hatfield. The Cougars won five of their first six games before losing three of their last four.
“I think we’re playing really well,” Hatfield said. “Just a couple losses here and there where we beat ourselves. Today was some of that. … Just the games that we’ve lost have been a lot of free bases on a lot of errors.
“We still feel really good about this team,” Hatfield added. “We’d have liked to have taken two or three of those close games when we lost it at the end. We just end up beating ourselves.
“We’re going to get better. We’re still trying to find the right nine every day. We feel really good about a lot of guys. I think we played well today, just not well enough at the end to win.”
Simonds went 3-for-4 for Edgewood, which outhit Ross 8-6. Cougars starter Jackson Spears pitched 3.1 innings, gave up three hits, allowed two runs, but walked seven. Carson Downie came in to finish it out for Edgewood.
“We kind of knew they were going to come out fighting today,” Hatfield said. “Obviously, this is a rivalry game. They’re coming to our place with a little extra energy adding to them to salvage the sweep. They played a great game.
“I think on the pitching side of things we had 11 walks. Just too many walks there. We always talk about how free bases will kill us.”
The Cougars loaded the bases in the bottom of the seventh before reliever Carson Sackenheim helped the Rams escape with the win.
Ross and Edgewood have quick turnarounds with Saturday games. The Cougars host Oakwood at 11 a.m., and the Rams travel to Ross Park for a 7 p.m. contest against Roger Bacon.
