By John Alvarado

After falling to Mountain Ridge High School in its previous game, Brophy’s baseball team returned home Friday and defeated the Arcadia Titans 18-11.

The meeting between the schools got off to a lopsided start with Arcadia taking a 5-1 lead by the middle of the second inning. The scoring for the Titans started in the first inning, when junior infielder Nick Dicarlo led off with a triple.

Dicarlo continued to torment Brophy, hitting a two-run home run off of Brophy Broncos’ starting pitcher Jake Vice in the second inning. Brophy head coach Tom Succow said that Vice was having some arm issues and was not as sharp as he was in his last performance.

Despite the starting pitcher’s performance, the Broncos never trailed the rest of the game following the bottom of the second inning, when the team put up nine runs.

The Broncos began the comeback with center fielder Jacob Talamente hitting a double, which brought in two of his teammates. Broncos right fielder JJ Hessel added a three-run homer in the same inning off junior starting pitcher Matt Schroer.

By the end of the second inning, the Broncos led the Titans 10-5. Hessel said that he was just trying to help his team win and that he got some good pitches his way.

Succow replaced Vice with Frank Allman, who held Arcadia scoreless in the third and fourth innings. Allman mixed up some of his pitches during those innings, he said.

“Our pitchers have something to work on,” Allman said. “But caps off to our hitters who can hit.”

The hits continued to come through the rest of the game starting in the fifth inning,

The Titans scored two in the top of the fifth when senior catcher Sam Huff hit a double. Brophy answered with two runs of its own in the bottom half, scoring one after an infield fly by Hessel to put the Broncos up 13-7.

In the top of the sixth inning, Arcadia started closing in after scoring three runs. Junior Jake Walshire started the scoring with a triple, which brought infielder Andrew Scheinhart home. Walshire would later score after an Andrew Smith single. However, Hessel and the Broncos struck again. Brophy scored five in the sixth, highlighted by Hessel’s two-run home run.  

Brophy’s next game will be at home on March 8 versus Sunnyslope High School at 7:00 p.m. 

John Alvarado is a sports journalism student at Arizona State University.