PV Remains on Top of Baseball Standings with Win Over Heritage

By Joe Conroy
Special to LoudounPrepSports.com

Leesburg (May 1, 2007) – Matt Griffin tossed six
shutout innings against Heritage Tuesday to lead Park View to a 3-2 AA
Dulles District victory. The win keeps the Patriots (10-2, 13-4) on top
of the standings and eliminated the Pride (6-5, 9-6) from
regular-season title contention.

The senior struck out six Pride batters and allowed only two hits
and four walks, all after getting home from New York at 4 a.m. (For
more on Griffin’s long day, see Dan Sousa’s On The Sidelines column).

“It was tough to bounce back,” Griffin said, “but my defense was
right behind me and the team was behind me cheering me up the whole
time. I knew I had to come out and do my job for these guys and not for
myself.”

Griffin also drove in what turned out to be the winning run in the
top of the seventh as he gave Park View a 3-0 lead. Heritage was able
to score two runs in the bottom of the inning against reliever Kyle
Irish, but Jimmy Kerby recorded the final two outs with the bases
loaded to notch the save and secure the win.

“That was another one of those classic Park View-Heritage
ballgames,” said Park View coach Mickey Leap. “You can never have
enough runs and you never know what’s going to happen. Matt threw a
heck of a ballgame.”

Park View took a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning when they broke
through against Heritage reliever Grant Groves in his first inning of
work. Lead-off hitter Nathan White reached on a single and after moving
around on two wild pitches, he scored on Dylan Smith’s single. Smith
later scored on William Bradley’s one-out RBI single.

“We got key hits and it was just a great baseball game,” Leap said.

With only two district games remaining, Leap says his squad controls
their own destiny. “If we take care of our business we’ll be alright.”

It was the Patriots third consecutive 1-run district victory as Park
View came from behind last Friday to defeat Dominion 9-8 and a week ago
the Patriots edged Loudoun County 1-0 in 11 innings.

Heritage (6-5, 9-6) skipper Ryan Price was pleased with how his team
continued to battle even in the late innings, but wished it was spread
out a little more throughout the game.

“We’ve been pretty good in the seventh inning all year,” he said,
“and anytime you’ve got Griffin on the mound you’re thinking it’s going
to be a low-scoring ballgame. We were excited to see a pitching
change,” Price added. “Griffin shut us down all day. We figured we’d
put something together, but just came up a little short.”