Kenston captures district crown

TWINSBURG >> The Kenston baseball team was OK with being called Cinderella last season.

Don’t try to slide that slipper on to the Bombers this year, though.

The Bombers scored two runs in the top of the sixth inning and then got two lockdown innings of relief from Nikko Georgiou to post a 5-4 win over Creston Norwayne in the Division II Twinsburg District championship game on May 24.

The win puts ninth-seeded Kenston (17-11) into a regional semifinal next week against the winner of Gilmour and Benedictine. Fourth-seeded Norwayne bows out at 20-5-1.

“This is huge for our program,” Georgiou said after slamming the door in the seventh. “We had a Cinderella story last year. We’re here to put it on kids this year.”

It was a 3-3 game in the top of the fifth when Georgoiu walked and came around on Bridger Bischof’s triple down the rightfield line. Grant Beclay followed with a sacrifice fly to deep center to make it a 5-3 game.

Bischof had an RBI double in the fourth inning as well, having a productive day out of the eighthole in the Bombers’ lineup.

“It felt awesome,” Bischof said of his big day. “I changed something right before the playoff and it worked. This feels amazing.”

Staked to a two-run lead, Georgiou relieved Avery Siperky after Norwayne got the first two runners of the bottom of the sixth on base. Even though Lucas Dute delivered an RBI single to narrow the margin to 5-4, Georgiou picked Ashton Snyder off at second base and then struck out Bo Polen to end the threat.

“Carter Flynn called a beautiful play,” Georgiou said of the pickoff play from Kenston’s veteran shortstop. “Perfect timing and I