Butler Pummels Piqua 11-1 In Route

VANDALIA - The throw was already in the air when Koby Dues hit third base at full speed.

It had started simply enough - a bleeder single to right, an uncontested steal of second, and then a catcher's return throw that sailed over Piqua pitcher Lukah Branam’s head and kept rolling into center field. Dues never hesitated. He turned the corner at third and ran like the game depended on it, even though Butler already led by four.

The tag was waiting. So was the crowd.

He got his hand under it - just barely, swiping across the plate with nothing to spare in timing or inches - and when the umpire's hands spread wide Dues exploded off the turf screaming, and the nearly 400 people (mostly in pink) roared right back at him on a cold Friday night under the lights at Butler High School.

That was the fourth inning. It was also, in every way that matters, the whole story.

Dues didn't just play in Butler's 11-1 demolition of Piqua on Friday. He conducted it. The junior shortstop reached base five times - two hits, two walks - stole three bases, scored three runs, and drove in another. He was the first Aviator to score, crossing in the first inning on a Jackson Schilling single, and he was one of the loudest voices in the dugout every time someone else did the same.

The Aviators wearing pink jerseys for their Strike Out Cancer game, a nod to Pink Ribbon Good, looked every bit the part of a team that believes in something bigger than the scoreboard. The Aviators jumped in front immediately, built through the middle innings with the kind of patient, relentless baseball that defines what head coach Trent Dues and his staff have built on the south side of Dayton International, and put it away with a six-run sixth that ended on Davis Ketterer dropping a walkoff single into right field with the bases loaded.

Tate Richardson (8-0) did his part on the mound the way he usually does - without much fuss and with considerable effect. The right-hander, who leads the league in wins, worked 5.2 innings, surrendered four hits and one unearned run, struck out eight and never let Piqua sniff anything meaningful after their lone run in the third. When a bases-loaded two-out jam materialized in the fifth, Richardson struck out the next batter and walked off the mound the same way he walked on it.

Unfazed.

Sophomore Carson Heis came on to close out the win in the sixth, retiring the only batter he faced on strikes.

Jack Egbert went 2-for-4 with two RBI. Schilling added two hits and a run scored. Declan Scheffler doubled, scored twice, and added a sacrifice fly. Nine stolen bases total for the Aviators, a number that tells you less about Piqua's catcher and more about who Butler is - a team that takes what the game gives and then takes a little more.

Work wins. On Friday night, so did the kid who runs like he's got something to prove every single time he rounds a base.