After a scoreless first inning, the bats of George Mason High School’s varsity baseball team caught fire against the visiting Dominion High Titans, and the Mustangs rolled to a 10-0 victory Wednesday afternoon.
Tyler Duncan got the Mustangs’ offense started in the 2nd inning with a single. He advanced on a sacrifice bunt by Evans Mandes and scored Mason’s first run on a bunt single by Michael Wolfe. Tyler Roth singled, Stephen Lubnow’s double drove in Wolfe and Roth, Lubnow scored on a Dominion error, and Mason was up 4-0 at the inning’s end.
Mason pitcher Max Kaplow sat the Titans down 1-2-3 in the 3rd, just as he had in the first two innings. In the bottom of the 3rd, Mason kept on lighting up the scoreboard, as six of the Mustangs’ first seven batters reached base – Quinn Casteel (single), P.J. Anderson (walk), Duncan (single), Mandes (walk), Roth (double) and Lubnow (single). Dominion finally brought in pitching relief, but by then Mason had scored five more runs for a 9-0 lead.
The Titans managed a couple of hits in the top of the 4th, but then Mason’s defense shut the door. In the bottom of the 4th, Kaplow led off with a single and later scored on Duncan’s single. That made it 10-0, and when Dominion failed to score in the 5th, the slaughter rule was invoked, ending the game.
Lubnow and Duncan were both 3-for-3 at the plate and drove in six runs between them – four by Lubnow and two by Duncan. Roth was 2-for-2 with two RBIs, and Kaplow batted 2-for-3 to go along with his shutout pitching; he threw a three-hitter, striking out six.
The victory over Dominion, a Loudoun County school that plays in the AA Dulles District, lifted Mason’s record for the season to 4-5. On Friday, Mason takes its 2-0 Bull Run District mark down to Madison County for a 7 p.m. game. Strasburg, another Bull Run rival, comes to Falls Church on Tuesday, April 20 for a 5 p.m. matchup.
