If you ask Stillwater coach Mike Parker, he’ll tell you the Ponies live and die by their ace, Joe Zorn, so when the senior gave up two two-out runs in the seventh inning, just as the folks in the Midway Stadium crowd were beginning to edge off their seats, he didn’t even think about taking him out.

Stillwater led off with that mentality, scoring its first run to take the lead in the first inning, and then throwing out the potential tying run at the plate in the top of the second.

“With Joe on the mound, if we can get him some early runs, his confidence really builds,” Parker said.

The Ponies added two runs to the lead in the second, but in the top of the third, it looked as if they would need every one. With no outs and a man on first and second, Raider Tim McClanahan hit a bomb to deep right.

“I thought that was in the parking lot behind the fence,” Zorn said.

It barely stayed in, probably in part due to the heavy wind, and rightfielder Alex Huth made a stellar play at the edge of the warning track to halt the runners. From there, Zorn was able to get a strikeout and induce a ground ball to escape the inning without any damage.

“That just counts as an out, but when Joe leaves a pitch up and the kid absolutely smashes it … you think ‘Oh my god, it’s going to be tied up,’ and then when he catches that ball, that’s worth a lot more than one out,” Parker said.

The Raiders had chances after that, but didn’t convert until the very end, leaving men on base in every inning except one. The Ponies scored again in the third and then twice in the fifth when a simple grounder to starting pitcher Zach Boyle led to a flurry of throwing errors that cleared the bases.

“You get a ground ball to the pitcher and they score two runs on the play – that’s not supposed to happen at this level,” Raiders coach Jim O’Neill said.

Said catcher Tom Forster, who went two-for-four with two doubles of the consistent scoring by the Ponies: “We know that two runs isn’t going to beat a team like Cretin; they’re a good hitting team. There was great energy in the dugout, the best we’ve had all year.”