Photo by Nick Henthorn Shadyside’s Luke Crozier winds up for a pitch Wednesday against the Steubenville Catholic Central Crusaders in the second inning of a 3-2 win for the Tigers. Crozier pitched six innings with seven strikeouts.

SHADYSIDE — While winds whipped around the baseball diamond at Fleming Field– a preamble to the rainstorm which rained down on the area later Wednesday night– it seemed fitting that the contest taking place between the Shadyside Tigers and Steubenville Catholic Central Crusaders was one between a team that has weathered the storm of their learning curve, and one that still seems mired in it.

In a game that came down to the game’s final out, the Tigers topped the Crusaders 3-2 thanks to Trenton Marling’s walk off run.

“It’s a microcosm of our season,” Catholic Central head coach Don Young said. “We play really good baseball at times, and then we just make too many mistakes. Little things have hurt us all year, and we keep working to get better at those things.”

“Those were games we lost last year,” Shadyside head coach Jason Collins said. “One-run games. We had a whole team effort today, we basically played solid through six and two-thirds, then we have two errors there in the end. But we did our job back in the bottom.”

Both teams got strong performances from their starting pitchers, Shadyside’s Luke Crozier (7K, 2BB, six hits and two runs allowed) and Catholic Central’s Kody Carver (3K, 3BB, four hits and three runs allowed) limiting each others’ offenses.

“Kody Carver pitched his butt off,” Young said. “He deserved to win the baseball game. They matched up with him, but he gave us all he had. He’s our guy, and we’re proud of him.”

“Hats off to my pitcher,” Collins said. “The sophomore went six strong. I’m pleased with this one.”

Shadyside struck first in the bottom of the third, scoring two runs in a bit of an unorthodox two-out rally. With Damian Russell on third and Ben Wach on first after a walk and a single, respectively, Russell marched to the plate after a called balk on a pickoff attempt. A single by Wyatt Parr brought home Wach to put the home team ahead.

Steubenville got one run back in the top of the fourth, though they would strand two runners. After Kody Carver and Peyton Rauch each singled to start the inning, putting runners on the corners with no outs, they remained stagnant on the basepaths until there were two outs, when Michael DiCarlo looped a single that scored Carver.

Crozier struck out the next batter to strand Rauch and DiCarlo.

Crozier and Carver worked scoreless innings from there until the seventh inning.

Jacob Allen relieved Crozier for the seventh, and the freshman induced groundouts from the first two batters he faced before running into some trouble, the following two batters each reaching. With the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, Brayden Rauch knocked a single, scoring Peyton Rauch and tying the game.

Catholic Central stranded two runners once again though as Allen stopped the Crusaders’ rally there.

Trenton Marling drew a full-count walk to start the bottom of the seventh, at which point Eli Fayak took over on the mound for Catholic Central. Marling got to second on a wild pitch and advanced to third on a groundout before coming around to score and ending the game.

“I think we’re a good baseball team if we can put it all together, but [Shadyside] is a really good baseball team who used two really good pitchers. I thought we had really good at-bats, but we gave away some things. You just can’t do that against a good baseball team.”