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Chambersburg baseball earns first home win


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It looked to be smooth sailing for the Chambersburg baseball team after the fifth inning, when the Trojans racked up a five-run cushion over Carlisle.

But the team's first home victory was threatened in the seventh, when the Thundering Herd capitalized on a struggling pitcher, scored four runs and left the bases loaded.

The Trojans had two outs on the board, and thankfully for the home team, an easy infield fly ended the game before any more damage was done, giving Chambersburg its first home win in Scott Folmar's tenure, 7-6 over Carlisle, in a Mid Penn Commonwealth game.

"We've played a couple good games at home this year, but we finally figured out how to win one at home. This is a big one for us," Folmar said.

"It got a little nerve-wracking there at the end," the Trojans' Austin Suders said, "The first couple (of runs they scored), we were like, it's fine, we had a pretty big lead, but knowing Chance (McClure) was out there, we knew we were going to be fine in the end."

"We have seen ourselves behind like that late in the game far too often this season," Carlisle coach Travis Smink said. "Fortunately we were able to find some holes that inning and score some runs; we just came up one run short."

McClure came in for Cam Flinn in the fourth, and pitched his way through the jam in the seventh inning, drawing two pop-outs for the final two outs of the game.

Suders kicked things off for the Trojans (3-4, 3-2 MPC) in the fifth inning, hitting an RBI double with two outs to start Chambersburg's five-run inning, which was aided by three Carlisle fielding errors.

Two batters later, after another score for the Trojans thanks to a wild pitch, Sean Vessah hit a two-RBI single to left field, and advanced to second on an error for another runner in scoring position. Kevin Carbaugh followed with a single to short, but an error at first base brought Vessah home for the fifth run of the inning.

"We strung together a bunch of good hits throughout the lineup in that inning," Folmar said. "The bottom part of our order was putting the ball in play and doing a good job for us. It's great the lower half guys came through."

Suders ended the night going 3-for-4 with an RBI and scored three times. Vessah was 2-for-3 with three RBIs.