Coach Pete Moore earns 200th win as Hatboro-Horsham beats Wissahickon

LOWER GWYNEDD >> Head coach Pete Moore has won a lot of games in his 18 seasons at Hatboro-Horsham.

In recent years his teams have found success with dominant pitching and timely hitting.

Moore picked up his 200th career win Thursday afternoon and it followed the same trend.

The Hatters knocked off Suburban One League American Conference rival Wissahickon, 4-1, at Wissahickon High School.

“It makes it special to do it with this group,” Moore said. “This is the kind of team you love to coach, just competitors day-in, day-out. They love to come out and they work hard for you. They put the team before themselves. To me, that’s what I’ve tried to build in this program, so it means a lot to me to do it with these guys.”

The dominant pitching came from Benny Wilson. The junior right-hander threw a complete game, allowing one run on three hits. He struck out 11 batters to no walks. He faced 23 batters over seven innings.

“That’s him,” Moore said. “He threw a no-hitter against Cheltenham. When a guy gets on, you’re almost like how did that happen? He just dominates the zone. Today was the best his slider has been all year.”

Wilson thought this was his best overall performance of the year.

“I just felt real good with all my stuff,” he said. “Everything felt good. Fastball felt great and the back-foot slider was kind of killing it today.”

As for the timely hitting, the Hatters (12-3, 8-1 SOL American), who’s offense is stronger than in year’s past, scored two runs in the fifth and two in the seventh.

Bradan Mallon reached on an error with one out in the fifth and scored on an error — a would-be sacrifice fly from Ryley Robinson that was dropped — to tie the game at one. Robinson scored one batter later when Jimmy Tooley doubled, putting Hatboro ahead for good.

In the seventh, Anthony Liott and Mallon started the inning with back-to-back singles. A wild pitch scored Liott and put Mallon on third. Mallon crossed the plate on a Lucas Walker single to make it 4-1.

“It’s a little different this year,” Moore said. “We have the same great pitching we’ve had — our staff is tremendous — but we swing it a little bit and you saw it today. (Wiss’) Quinn (Rovner) in my mind is one of the top three pitchers in the league and you saw what we were able to do. What we have is a well-balanced lineup. Today you look at our eight and nine-holes with Ryley in the nine-hole and Lucas in the eight-hole were as big of contributors as anybody if not bigger contributors than anybody.”

Rovner got the start for Wissahickon (4-8, 3-6 SOL American) and was matching Wilson before the errors piled up behind him. He threw 6 1/3 innings with seven strikeouts and one walk. He allowed four runs — two earned — on seven hits.

“It’s been that type of year,” Wiss coach Andy Noga said. “One or two things happen in a game and that’s been costing us.

“Quinn went out there and did what we expected him to do. He pounded the strike zone and made them put balls in play. We didn’t execute behind him. We have to be able to do that.”

The Trojans took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first. Brian Menhardt reached with a one-out single and stole second. He scored on a Joe Hornig single.

Eddie Fortescue led off the bottom of the second inning with a single. That was the last hit for Wissahickon. Only one more batter reached base when Andrew Booth got hit by a pitch in the fifth inning.

“Benny’s a good pitcher,” Noga said. “I was around Benny my last year at H-H so I got a little taste of him, but he’s a very good pitcher. He pounded the strike zone more than I have ever seen him pound the strike zone. Very impressive today.”