WATERVILLE — Waterville Senior High School baseball coach Don Sawyer considered having J.T. Whitten take a pitch. The count was two balls, no strikes and there was two outs in the bottom of the first inning. Nah, Sawyer thought, let him swing away.

Whitten drove Josh Ouellette’s 2-0 fastball well over the centerfield fence. The Purple Panthers had a lead and all the momentum they’d need.

“That was one of the hardest hit balls I’ve seen all year,” Gardiner coach Chris McLaughlin said. “He absolutely crushed it.”

Waterville added eight runs in the second inning and cruised to an 11-1 win over Gardiner in the Eastern B quarterfinals. No. 2 Waterville (16-1) will host No. 3 John Bapst (13-4) at noon Saturday in the regional semifinals. No. 10 Gardiner ends the season 9-9.

“We just exploded. We just really hit the ball well that inning,” Waterville leadoff hitter Dan Pooler said of the eight-run second inning.

Lance Lefebvre started the second getting hit by a pitch. After Josh Gormley walked, Matt Lee hit a bunt single to load the bases. Brian Bellows worked a 10-pitch at-bat into a walk to drive home a run, and McLaughlin replaced Ouellette with Dennis Meehan.

“(Ouellette) faced them earlier in the year and he ran into some trouble, so if he got into trouble and started walking people, I told him that we were going to pull him early,” McLaughlin said.

Pooler greeted Meehan with a two-run single and Racean Wood drove in a run to make it 5-0. Whitten drove in a pair of runs in the inning and Lefebvre singled in another. The Panthers sent 13 batters to the plate in the pivotal inning.

Whitten pitched the first three innings for Waterville before giving way to Bellows. The move made Whitten available to pitch on Saturday if needed and gave Sawyer a chance to give Bellows, out the last month with an injury, some work.

“I haven’t done that very often, but we thought Bellows, we needed to see him,” Sawyer said. “He hasn’t pitched for almost four weeks now. It gave him a good experience out there.”

Waterville clinched the game with two runs in the bottom of the fifth off Josh McKelvey, Gardiner’s third pitcher. After Lee singled and Kaleb Kane walked, Pooler singled to drive in a run. Wood hit a sacrifice fly to left, scoring Kane with the 11th run, which ended the game due to the mercy rule.

Gardiner got a run in the fourth inning when Brandon Chaput scored on a throwing error.

Wood made the defensive play of the game in the second inning, diving in center field to catch a sinking line drive off the bat of Hunter Belanger.

“As soon as that ball left the bat, you could just see him, he’s got his eyes on it, he’s coming forward,” Sawyer said. “A lot of guys can’t make that read.”

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

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