Prep baseball: Fenwick blanks Summit as Napier leads postseason surge

SHARONVILLE — Basketball usually means C.J. Napier’s baseball season gets off to a slow, late start.

The Fenwick High School senior is quickly making up for lost time.

After throwing a no-hitter in an 8-0 win over Goshen in the Division II sectional opener May 14, the left-hander followed up with 6.2 innings of three-hit baseball, paving the way for the 10th-seeded Falcons to upset third-seeded Summit Country Day 5-0 in a district semifinal Tuesday at Princeton.

Fenwick (15-13) logged its fifth straight win and sixth in the last seven games to earn a berth in Thursday’s district championship game at Miamisburg against second-seeded Franklin. The Falcons will play in a district title game for the first time since 2015. They lost to Franklin 8-6 on April 16.

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“He’s been the driving force behind this run,” Falcons coach Chris Stratton said of Napier, who didn’t allow a runner past second base until the seventh inning while striking out five — four of them called — and walking four.

“I was using a pretty good mix of my fastball, curveball and changeup,” said Napier, who paced Fenwick’s nine-hit attack with three singles. “My changeup was tailing away from right-handed batters.”

Napier, making just his eighth pitching appearance of the season, probably would’ve finished the game if he hadn’t reached the Ohio High School Athletic Association-mandated limit of 125 pitches. Several foul balls by the bottom of the Silver Knights batting order in the last inning forced Stratton to call in sophomore left-hander Carter Earls to get the last out.

“My arm was getting a little tired,” said Napier, who gave up a leadoff double and a walk in the seventh.

Summit (21-8) went into the game having won 13 of its last 15 games, but Napier’s pitching and Fenwick’s airtight defense sent the Silver Knights to just their second shutout loss of the season.

Falcons sophomore second baseman Luke Metzger logged two popup putouts and four assists, including three on consecutive ground outs spanning the third and fourth innings. Senior catcher Nick Stratton helped stymie a SCD sixth-inning threat by pouncing on a pitch that skittered away from him to his right and throwing a would-be base stealer out at third base.

“We kicked it around a little bit early in the season,” Chris Stratton said. “We underperformed for most of the season. This is the way we should’ve been playing all year. We knew they were capable of playing well.”

The Falcons probably deserved their seed based on their record, Napier said, but that didn’t mean they were going to play down to it.

“We knew we had a better team than our record,” he said.

Senior center fielder R.J. Clesceri drove in three runs, one in the fifth with a grounder to Summit’s drawn-in shortstop, whose throw to the plate wasn’t in time to keep a sliding Chase Mulligan from scoring Fenwick’s second run. Clesceri added two RBIs with a ringing, bases-loaded single to right field that capped Fenwick’s nine-batter, three-run sixth inning.

The Falcons took a 1-0 lead with a two-out rally in the first inning. Napier reached on an infield single to shortstop and scored on senior shortstop Thomas Vogelsang’s double to right field.

Fenwick had a chance to take a commanding lead in the third inning when the Falcons loaded the bases with one out, but Earls — who started the game at first base — hit a chopper that the Silver Knights were able to turn into a pitcher-catcher-first base inning-ending double play.

Stratton started Fenwick’s sixth with a leadoff single. Senior first baseman Sully Janeck walked and the runners moved up on senior third baseman Alex Abbott’s sacrifice bunt. Senior left fielder Henry Nenni drove in Stratton with a single to left.

Fenwick 100-013-0—5-9-0

Summit Country Day 000-000-0—0-3-0

WP — C.J. Napier (3-3); LP — Eric Fisk (8-2). Records: F 15-13, S 21-8

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