Newmarket showed up to Wilton for a Division IV baseball semifinal rematch on Monday afternoon, but the only similarities between last spring’s thriller and Monday’s tilt were the jerseys and the end result, a win for the Mules. 

“We put the ball in play,” said first-year head Wilton-Lyndeborough coach Paul Levesque after the five-inning, 10-0 Newmarket win. “Our pitchers actually did a pretty good job. If we would have taken the errors out of it, the game would have been 5-0.”

Wilton-Lyndeborough graduated the bulk of last year’s starting lineup, including the backbone of the program for almost six years, the Brennan twins, who are now pitching for Keene State. And while the Warriors have four seniors on the roster – Robbie Gagnon, Tim Crowley, Junior Bausha and Kenny Begley – the group of upperclassmen saw virtually no playing time up until this season.

“This is a very young team, though the roster doesn’t show it,” Levesque said. “There are a lot of seniors on the roster, but to be honest, those seniors don’t have a whole lot of experience.”

The Warriors made it until the third inning without making a mistake, as sophomore pitcher Trevor Sullivan struck out four and kept WLC in the game. But in the third, back-to-back errors opened the floodgates for a five-run inning that put the Mules up 9-0, and the Warriors never recovered.

“They get down on themselves,” Levesque said. “If they have one particular bad inning or they make an error, it kind of piles on. I think what it is is that they lack confidence, and that’s one of the things I’ve been trying to give them more of is more confidence and just making sure they’re sticking to the basics.”

Freshman JJ Benson came in and struck out five batters over two innings to clean up the remainder of the game, allowing one run in the fifth to give Newmarket the 10-run mercy cushion. The Mules are now 5-2 on the year; last year’s runners-up look like contenders again and should serve as a blueprint for what the Warriors want to do. 

“[Newmarket] executed on everything they should have done correctly, and that’s the way that we should be playing as well,” Levesque said.

The Warriors got hits from Sullivan, Gagnon and Jacob Phillips on the day. 

WLC (1-6) started out the season with a pair of losses by a combined 36-2; in their six losses, they’ve been outscored 91-15. The Warriors did have an excellent game against Franklin, winning 18-8 at home, but it has been two steps forward, three steps back for WLC this spring. 

“[The win] was really uplifting,” Levesque said, “and it showed me what our team is capable of – but we just keep taking steps back. That’s what’s so frustrating as a coach is knowing they have that capacity, they have that drive, they have that skill, but then they make mistakes and stuff happens. We’ll get it.”

The Warriors host defending champions Sunapee on Thursday and travel to play at Newmarket Monday.

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