George Mason High School’s varsity baseball team opened its season by thrashing Freedom High in Woodbridge Thursday. The Mustangs plucked the Eagles bare in the first inning, amassing 15 hits and 19 runs, as almost the entire Mason lineup batted three times before Freedom finally managed three outs.
George Mason High School’s varsity baseball team opened its season by thrashing Freedom High in Woodbridge Thursday. The Mustangs plucked the Eagles bare in the first inning, amassing 15 hits and 19 runs, as almost the entire Mason lineup batted three times before Freedom finally managed three outs.
Mason senior shortstop Tyler Duncan led the early charge with a triple and two singles. Also part of the first inning Mustang hit-a-thon were four of the team’s junior starters – pitcher Max Kaplow (a double and two singles), catcher Stephen Lubnow (double, single), second baseman Jon Freeman (two singles), and outfielder Jack Trainor (double). Sophomore outfielder Nick Bourbeau singled twice and his classmate Lucas Cherry (the designated hitter) once, and senior outfielder Paul Weber also singled.
In subsequent play, Mason eased off a bit from its torrid early pace, but the Mustangs still accumulated 9 more hits and 14 more runs through the fifth inning, when the game was declared complete by way of the mercy rule. The final score was 33-0.
Kaplow pitched four innings of hitless ball and got the win; Weber took the mound in the fifth inning and crisply retired the Eagles to shut the door.
Kaplow was also the game’s top batsman, totaling 5 hits, followed by Duncan and Freeman (4 hits each), Lubnow and Bourbeau (3 each), Weber (2), and one apiece for Trainor, Cherry and sophomore Vijay Menon.
Freedom, a member of the AAA Cardinal District, has more than twice the enrollment of Mason, a member of the single A Bull Run District. But Freedom, a Prince William County school that opened in 2004, has not yet built a solid baseball program, in contrast to Mason, which in the past six season has a winning percentage in baseball of nearly .600. Last year’s team won the regular-season Bull Run championship, and Mason Coach Adam Amerine was chosen district coach of the year.
The Mason junior varsity baseball team also had a successful first outing on Thursday, defeating Arlington’s Washington-Lee High School 7-4.
