ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
BY MIKE ALONGI
BURLINGTON — For the second day in a row, a Lynn high school baseball team was eliminated from the state tournament by way of a walk-off.
A day after St. Mary’s fell to East Boston on a game-ending triple, the No. 15 Lynn Classical Rams lost a late lead and fell to the No. 10 Burlington Red Devils, 6-4, on a walk-off, three-run home run in the Division 2 North quarterfinals at Francis Wyman Field on Monday afternoon.
It was senior catcher Shane O’Halloran who had the big hit for Burlington, knocking his second homer of the game with two on and nobody out in the bottom of the seventh inning.
“I thought we stuck in there the whole way tonight,” said Classical coach Mike Zukowski. “We worked at-bats and kept it close the whole way, but in the end you have to make pitches and throw strikes, and we ended up leaving a couple balls up in the zone and paying for it today.”
Classical starter George Dimis pitched a great game for the Rams in his first tournament start, giving up two runs on six hits with three strikeouts in six innings of work.
“There’s a kid that was a JV player last year and came to us about halfway through the year due to some injuries, and he really stepped up,” Zukowski said of Dimis. “He got some big wins for us during the year and made his first tournament start today, and he really delivered for us.”
On the offensive side, Christian Burt went 3-for-3 with a double and two RBI, while David Barnard went 1-for-2 with a double, an RBI, a stolen base and a run scored.
The Rams got on the board early on, scoring a run on an error in the top of the second inning to take a 1-0 lead.
The lead didn’t last too long, however. In the top of the fourth inning, O’Halloran led off with a solo home run to dead centerfield to knot the score at 1-1.
In the bottom of the fifth, the Red Devils cashed in again with two on and one out when Evan Camilleri hit an RBI single to left field to give Burlington a 2-1 lead.
Classical was able to tie the score in the top of the sixth. With a man on second and one out, Andre Gaudet stepped to the plate. Although he struck out, he was able to make it to first base on a passed ball, placing runners on first and third. Next up was Barnard, who laced an RBI double off the wall in right-centerfield to tie the score. After a strikeout on the next batter, Burt stepped up and came up with a huge two-run single to put the Rams up 4-2.
“He had been a little quiet as of late, so we’ve been working on some swing mechanics over the past few days,” Zukowski said of Burt. “And he came through big today with those three hits, especially the last one.”
After moving through the bottom of the sixth, the Red Devils had one final chance to rally for a win.
Burlington got the first two runners on base after a walk and a hit batter. Camilleri came up next and hit an RBI single to make the score 4-3, setting things up for O’Halloran. The power-hitting catcher stepped in and hit a bomb over the right-field fence, ending Classical’s season in an instant.
The Rams finish up the season with an 11-11 record, while Burlington will move on to face No. 3 Reading in the Division 2 North semifinals at Fraser Field tonight at 7 p.m.
