WEST CHESTER TWP. — Noah Prewitt gave the impression that he was well prepared to take the mound Sunday afternoon.
The Talawanda High School senior had the notebook to prove it.
Prewitt hurled a complete game, striking out eight batters, and the visiting Brave went on to beat Lakota West 5-2 in an out-of-conference contest that was pushed from Saturday due to weather conditions.
“Coach looked at us, because recently we haven’t been hitting, and he was asking every single one of us what our approach was,” Prewitt said. “We just haven’t been playing well. We had to write down what we thought our approach should be.”
Prewitt collected his thoughts and jotted three pages full of notes.
“Me personally, I go through every scenario I can think of,” Prewitt said. “Inside, high, low, pushing the ball on the outside corner — whatever will help me the most at practice, will help me in the game.”
Prewitt only walked one Firebird hitter, sophomore Landon Holt, who came around to score on senior Noah Partin’s single in the bottom of the second.
“He comes prepared. It’s just one of those things where you just wind him up, and you just let him go,” Talawanda coach Matt Lykins said of Prewitt. “Noah’s been an essential part of this team now for three years. We value him as much as we can. He’s a special player. He brings his own approach. He brings his own way of doing things.”
The Brave (2-3) finished up five straight games on the road, snapped a three-game losing streak on Sunday and will play at home for the first time this season on Monday against Northwest. They’ll face the Knights at Northwest on Tuesday.
“That fact that everyone has been looking at the way they approach the last few practices, it’s been amazing.” Prewitt said. “Today, it shows what we can do.”
“You take care of the ball and you throw strikes, get timely hitting, good approaches at the plate — that’s what you’re going to get,” Lykins said. “I think this week has been a little tough with trying to find ourselves, and I think we’re starting to turn the corner. I’m real proud of them.”
Brave senior Logan Smith went 2-for-3 with three RBI, while Prewitt, junior Tyler Robinson and sophomore Eddie Tanner each added a hit.
Lakota West had six different players notch a base hit, while Holt and sophomore Adrian Smith scored the Firebirds’ two runs.
Lakota West (0-3) is still searching for its first win of the season.
“Kid threw a great game. He kept us off-balance,” Firebirds coach Brad Gschwind said of Prewitt. “They had a couple of opportunities to score some runs, and they capitalized. Another arm just kept us off-balance all day.
“You know you could always do better in certain situations, and our guys are working hard at that,” Gschwind added. “Looking at where we were last Monday and where we’re at right now, our at-bats are going in the right direction. At some point, balls are going to start falling.”
Lakota West sophomore and starting pitcher LJ Green threw four innings of work and struck out three hitters in the loss.
The Firebirds travel to Middletown on Monday. Then they’ll pick things back up on Tuesday against Fairfield from last week’s 3-3 tie that was called in the ninth inning due to lack of sunlight.
