For whatever reason, it's the away team that's had the advantage when Hempfield Area and Norwin meet (two straight games heading into this one) and that held true again on Wednesday. The Spartans walked away with a 5-2 win over the Knights. This was a revenge game for the Spartans: when they faced off against the Knights on Tuesday, they had to take a 12-2 loss.
Kevin Bender tossed a big game, tossing five innings while giving up just one earned (and one unearned) run off two hits. Hempfield Area is 2-1 when Bender allows one or fewer earned runs, but 2-3 otherwise.
Ian Kovalcik
| 04/02/25 @ Norwin | 2 |
| 03/31/25 @ Norwin | 1 |
| 03/25/25 @ Stagg | 1 |
| 03/18/25 @ Pine-Richland | 1 |
At the plate, Hempfield Area's victory was truly a team effort as four different players contributed at least one hit. One of them was Ian Kovalcik, who went 2-for-3 with one double. Those two hits gave Kovalcik a new career-high. Evan Dunlap also deserves some recognition as he hit his first double of the season.
Hempfield Area pushed their record up to 4-4 with the win, which was their third straight on the road. The road victories came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 2.0 runs on average over those games. As for Norwin, their defeat dropped their record down to 3-5.
We've got plenty of inter-conference action coming up soon. Hempfield Area is set to take on their familiar foe Mt. Lebanon at 4:15 p.m. on Monday. Meanwhile, Norwin will face off against rival Canon-McMillan at 4:00 p.m. on Monday.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
