It was a big week for Manchester senior Bryan Young, on the mound and at the plate. On the mound, Young picked up a pair of wins and at the plate, he homered in game one of a doubleheader and raised his season batting average to .538.


Story and photos by Mark Carpenter – 

It was a busy week for Coach Dustin Cook and his Manchester Greyhounds baseball squad as they managed to get in four games in five days, splitting a pair of Southern Hills Athletic Conference games, then splitting a Saturday afternoon doubleheader with the Sciotoville East Tartans.
The week began on Tuesday, April 4 with the Hounds hosting a young team of Ripley Blue Jays and rolling to a 15-6 victory. The home team banged out 13 hits, three from Bryan Young, and two each from Hunter Conley, Kaulen Cox, Kaige Cox, and Jase Thatcher, and tallied 12 runs in the second inning to put this conference win in the books.
Young was the starter and winner on the mound for the Greyhounds, with Ripley’s Brian Dunn taking the loss.
After a couple of days off, the Hounds were in SHAC action again, this time on the road at Whiteoak on Friday, April 7. This time the outcome wasn’t so good for the blue and gold as they were held to just a single run by a pair of Wildcat pitchers in a 6-1 defeat.
Manchester took the lead in the top of the first when Conley led off the game with a two-base hit to left and later came across on an RBI groundout by Colton Thornburg to make it 1-0. That lead was short-lived because Wildcat pitching closed the door the rest of the way while their offense picked up one in the first, two in the second, and one in the third to take a lead they never relinquished.
Kaleb Henschen was the starter and loser for the Hounds, going five innings, allowing just three earned runs, and striking out seven Whiteoak hitters. Young had another nice day at the plate, collecting three hits in four trips, while Conley added two hits as the Hounds fell to 2-2 in the SHAC.

Manchester’s Jase thatcher cruises into second base after banging out a double to left field in the Hound’s 15-6 win over Ripley.

The Manchester nine took advantage of a wonderful spring day on Saturday to host Sciotoville East in a doubleheader of action. In Game One, a trio of Manchester pitchers, Bryan Young, Hunter Conley, and Jase Thatcher combined to fire a four-hit shutout as the Hounds took a 10-0 win in six innings.
The Greyhound offense got rolling early, picking up three runs in the bottom of the first, two of them coming home on a Thornburg double, and in the bottom of the second tallied two more, both of them coming when Young continued his hot hitting by driving the first pitch he saw over the left field fence for a two-run homer.
The home team added three more on the fifth and two more in the sixth that gave them a 10-run lead and enforced the OHSAA run rule.
Besides his heroics at the plate, now hitting .538 for the year, Young got his second win of the week on the mound in Game One, but Game Two was a different story as the Hounds were a little short on pitching as ace Kaulen Cox was down with an injury and a rash of wildness allowed East to score 14 first inning runs on their way to a 22-7 win and a split for the day.