By SPENCER BATES
OLEAN — Olean baseball head coach Les DeGolier described Austin Miles as the heartbeat of the team.
In an 11-0, six-inning mercy rule win over Fredonia, he was exactly that.
From start to finish, Miles was center stage for the Huskies.
After returning from an injury he picked up during this past football season and recording two quality starts on the mound, his third start might have been the best of the bunch. Through five innings, he racked up eight strikeouts and walked one batter without giving up a hit. Landon Johnson, who came in for relief, did not give up a hit in his inning on the bump either, solidifying a combined no-hitter.
But that’s not where Miles’ contributions ended. With a bat in his hands, he was just as dangerous. From the leadoff spot, Miles went 2-for-4 with a run, four RBI and a 3-run home run.
“He certainly is a complete package, and to have him healthy is obviously the biggest cog of this team,” DeGolier said of Miles. “His three starts so far this year have been dang near about as perfect as you can get. We slid him back into the lead off position because he’s the heart and soul, and he gets things started for us. If he’s rolling, we’re gonna be rolling. He’s certainly a special player.”
And while it wasn’t necessarily required on the day, the overall depth of the Huskies’ pitching unit has been critical to the team’s success. In its most recent game, at Fredonia, Noah Cartmill threw a complete game, striking out 13, walking two and giving up just four hits.
“It was one of the things I was excited about going into the season,” DeGolier said of his rotation of pitchers. “I feel like since I’ve started coaching, this is the most depth that I’ve had at that position. Being able to rely on a bunch of arms, I think we have five or six strong players that we have a lot of confidence in, that’s huge. It allows us to do things like give Miles a little shorter of a day to rest up for his next start. And we’re fully confident in the guy that comes behind him.”
Miles was certainly the star of the show, but not to be glossed over is the production Olean got from the rest of the team.
The Huskies’ last game at home was a 5-4 walk-off win over Southwestern which DeGolier dubbed a ‘complete team game.’ He got another one against the Hillbillies.
Olean tallied 10 hits as a team, with four players (Miles, Alex Jones, Dom Myers and Gehrig Perry) recording two hits apiece. Also all but one player made it across home plate at some point in the contest with Tyler Sullivan being responsible for three of the 11 runs his team scored.
After making a slight change following a three-up, three-down first inning, the Olean offense was unstoppable.
“We started a little slow, in the first inning, we were popping the ball up, we were kind of getting under it a little,” DeGolier said. “We told them to get on top of the ball a little bit more, focus on hitting line drives, and once we started doing that, we find the gaps, we get the hits. That was one of our things we were conscious of. We didn’t really cash in runners in scoring positions last Friday, and we wanted to make sure that we did that today. I thought, especially in the later innings, we certainly did that.”
Olean’s Dom Myers (11) connects on a pitch against Fredonia. Myers went 2-for-4 with two RBI for the Huskies in their win. (Spencer Bates)
Another aspect of the win that DeGolier praised was the defense. It was the second consecutive game for the Huskies without an error and highlighting the effort behind Miles and Johnson was Gehrig Perry at shortstop, who picked and dished with expertise all afternoon.
“He’s huge. He’s smooth at short. He’s a little vacuum cleaner,” DeGolier said of Perry. “He plays the game the right way. It’s really fun to coach kids like him, and there’s a bunch of them on this team, but it’s certainly fun to watch Gehrig play short.”
Olean now finds itself in the midst of a three-game win streak and sitting with a 6-1 overall record.
It will look to put another tally in the win column on April 29 at 5 p.m. when it hosts Salamanca.
AT OLEAN
Fredonia 000 000 X R:0 H:0 E:3
Olean 040 304 X R:11 H:10 E:0
Fred: Miles (8 SO, 1 BB), Johnson (0 SO, 1 BB) and DeGolier
OL: Tabone (1 SO, 2 BB), Conroy (1 SO, 0 BB) and Frame
