WALES — Recent poor weather that resulted in little to no time outdoors had no effect on the  Oak Hill baseball team Monday afternoon.

Or, for that matter, on Caleb Valliere.

Oak Hill cruised to an 11-1 win over Spruce Mountain in a soggy contest at Fairchild Field, a game that ended in five innings due to the 10-run rule. It was only the second time the Raiders (1-1) had played outdoors this spring, the other coming in the season opener April 11, a 6-5 loss at Mt. Abram.

The Raiders racked up their 11 runs on 10 hits. Sophomore shortstop Gavin Rawstron led the way with three hits — including a triple — and had two RBIs. Valliere followed suit with two hits and three RBIs.

“To come out today and really hit the ball — (hitters) one through nine — was nice,” Oak Hill coach Chad Stowell said. “I hate to make an excuse — but everyone is in the same boat — we’re on Day 5 being outside. We haven’t even had a practice (outdoors), because the second we get outside, we start out scrimmaging. Tomorrow is our first practice on our field, with our (batting) cage up and everything. It’s a tough way to start, but it was a great response by these guys today.”

Valliere shined on the mound. The junior allowed a run on four hits, striking out seven batters in five innings. He showed a variety of pitches, but his out pitch came via the fastball.

“I was feeling really phenomenal (on the mound),” Valliere said. “Our team (defense was) amazing, really good. We got the bats going really well.”

Spruce Mountain (0-2) took its lone lead of the day in the first, when Jack Gilbert plated Trey Davis from third on an infield single for the 1-0 lead. Oak Hill tied the game in the bottom of the inning, when Ezra Juray smacked an RBI double to right field to score Rawstron — who sprinted all the way from first base.

Juray finished with two hits on the afternoon for Oak Hill.

The Raiders took the lead in the second and never looked back, racking up four runs in the inning, highlighted by a two-run single to right by Valliere. They took advantage of three Spruce Mountain errors in the third inning to tack on three more runs to take an 8-1 lead, and added three more runs in the fourth and fifth innings to end the contest.

Valleire had some slight trouble in the fifth inning — giving back-to-back two-out hits to Bryson Bailey and Logan Moffet. But he induced a ground ball out of Gilbert to get out of the jam.

“Caleb was excellent today,” Stowell said. “He’s worked very hard in the offseason to be able to throw longer innings. Last year, we used him a lot as a short guy. He knew he was going to have to come in (this season) and pick up more of the load. I expected this out of him. This is what we should see out of Caleb every time.”

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