Olympia baseball tops Ocoee in 10 innings, 4-3

OCOEE — It took all of 10 innings, but the Olympia Titans remained undefeated on Friday and concluded a sweep of their first district series with 4-3 win over the host Ocoee Knights.

For the nationally ranked Titans, it was the third one-run win of the young season.

"We play pretty good defense and we pitch well and it keeps us in every game," head coach Chuck Schall said of his team's success in close ballgames.

Both teams got quality starts on the mound. Olympia's Michael Byrne went 8 innings for the Titans, allowing just one run, and Logan Cariglio went 7.2 innings for the Knights, also just allowing one run.

Jaylyn Whitehead tossed two innings and got the win for Olympia after a three-run top of the 10th inning gave the Titans some breathing room — breathing room they almost ran out of as an Ocoee rally in the bottom of the 10th fell just short.

"These are the kind of games you've got to get through sometimes," Schall said. "It's easy to get up for West Orange and all that, but Ocoee, every time we play those guys, they battle us."

It was a positive effort for the Knights (4-3) to nearly knock off their nationally ranked rival, but the loss did drop them to 0-2 in district play after an 8-1 loss at Olympia on Wednesday.

"(Olympia is) a good team, they're the best team we've seen all year," Ocoee coach Bobby Brewer said. "We went over to their place Wednesday and we didn't play well. All we asked our kids to do was come out and compete today and that's what I think we did."