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Surging Lightning Beat Freedom

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 10:03pm

The Lightning continued their second half surge with a home win over the Orlando Freedom 9-4 Tuesday night in front of a packed house. Winter Park had played earlier in the day and won, putting the pressure on Leesburg to come through with a victory to retain their one game lead in the standings and that’s exactly what they did.

                Coach Dave Thernerau was back in the dugout for the first time since being tossed out of the second game of Friday’s doubleheader and the team flat outperformed the Freedom for nine innings. He didn’t take his usual spot as third base coach, however, leaving the hot tandem of assistant coaches James Scrubbs and Jon Bolt on third and first, respectively. Under the two assistants over the weekend, the Lightning swept the River Rats.

                In these teams last meeting, Nic Kovacs threw seven scoreless innings in an 8-0 shutout. He wasn’t as dominant as he was last week on Tuesday night, but he pitched well enough for a Leesburg victory.

                Things got off to a rocky start when the Freedom scored a run off three hits in the top half of the first , but Kovacs would regain his form and was helped out by the electric Lightning offense.

                The team instantly rebounded in the bottom frame, taking advantage of some errant pitching by the Freedom. Their starter walked three and hit two; combined with some intermittent hits sprayed in led to a four run first for the Lightning. And the lead would remain the rest of the contest.

                Leesburg knocked out the Orlando starter in the third inning after scoring three more runs. Two came off the bat of Mike Albaladejo, who ripped a double down the left field line with runners on second and third.

                “We have guys stepping up when we need it,” said Chase Durham who had himself three hits on the night. Durham also pointed to assistant coach Steve Sabins when it came to the teams work ethic. “He’s out there with me in the cages before games and drilling guys in the infeield with groundballs and working on our defense.”

                The improvement has been obvious, especially in the infield, where the reduction in errors over the last few weeks has been a direct cause of more Lightning wins and better play all around.

                Kovacs would pick up his fourth win of the season despite giving up three runs and nine hits over six innings of work.

                The Freedom looked like they might make a game of it when they came within four runs and had the tying run in the on deck circle, but Leesburg worked out of jams all night and despite being surprisingly outhit by the Freedom, the team got clutch hits all night long.

                “This game is all about situational hitting,” said Coach Therneau.”We get guys on base and we have guys on this team who come up with hits in those situations with two outs and runners on second or third.”

                Coach also attributed the late season surge to a break in the monotony of the season. “You know I told the guys they can go home or on vacation over the (All-Star) break and they all stayed here,” he said. “I want guys that want to be here and we have that.”

                The Lightning take on the Loggerheads at Winter Haven tomorrow at 7:00.

By: Nick Beardi (Medaille College)