A Win Justin Time For Ledyard Baseball

Finishing .500 in the brutally-tough Eastern Connecticut Conference Large Division would rank as a major accomplishment for most state baseball teams.

Since the Red Sox broke their 86-year title drought in 2004, ECC Large teams (NFA, Fitch, Waterford) have won three state titles and reached six finals overall. East Lyme and Ledyard have reached semifinals recently as well. Even doormat Woodstock shared an ECC crown a few years back.

The 10 ECC Large Divisional games are tantamount to a gauntlet for Ledyard, which has toiled against countless opposing Division I college pitchers over the past few years in Waterford's Rob Bono and Colin O' Keefe, Fitch's Matt Harvey and Jesse Hahn and NFA's Andrew Carignan and Dominic Leone.

The Colonels are traditionally underdogs against these baseball powerhouses, especially recently during four straight losing seasons. This current young season offered onimous signs for Ledyard, which lost in lopsided fashion to St. Bernard, Bacon and Waterford  after an opening win over Sports Sciences Academy, a team several rungs below an ECC Large level squad.

So you would think that Ledyard's 5-4 comeback win over NFA Friday would perhaps signify a signature moment to the Colonels' young compaign. Justin Williams pitched a complete-game victory to lift Ledyard to 2-3 overall (1-1 ECC Large).

Ledyard coach Sam Kilpatrick, however, thinks the Colonels are capable of more than a surprise win here and there.

"Any time Ledyard beats NFA in anything we're happy about that," Kilpatrick said. "Seeing that I haven't been .500 in the ECC Large for a while, I should be happy about that, but I wouldn't be happy about that now. We can do better than that with this group."

Kilpatrick, in his 19th season as Ledyard coach, believes this is his best team by far since he led the Colonels to 18 wins and the Class L semifinals in 2006. Williams, who signed a letter of intent to pitch at Southern Connecticut State University next season, heads a quality three-man starting pitching staff with senior Jack Porter and sophomore Chris Turner, who starts at shortstop.

"Any one of my three pitchers can go seven and are capable of stopping anyone in the league," Kilpatrick said.

Kilpatrick stuck with the right-handed Williams, one of the ECC's hardest throwers who mixes a sharp slider, on a cool, sunny day. Though he worked to multiple 3-2 counts, Williams only walked three and struck out 11 in a complete-game effort.

"I had someone loosening up for the seventh, but weren't going there unless there was big trouble because Williams had plenty left in the tank," Kilpatrick said.

Despite stranding 11 base runners, Ledyard tied the game at 4-4 in the fourth when Kyle Perry doubled, moved to third on Ryan Pementil's bunt and scored on a misplayed infield ground ball. The Colonels left the bases loaded in the fifth, but pushed a run across in the bottom of the seventh. Pementil's single and Matt Liguore's tie-breaking sacrifice fly scoring Turner with the winning run were the key blows.

"We're going to be competitive every game," Kilpatrick said. "Waterford pounded the ball against us, but other than that the kids have been positive and we're going to be fine."

With Waterford, East Lyme, Fitch, NFA, Ledyard and Woodstock looking more evenly-matched than in the past, perhaps the Large will yield a different winner than that standard old guard. Maybe Ledyard, if Friday's win over NFA signals future fortunes.