Baseball: Thurs with walk-off single in the 7th lifts Marathon to 4-3 win over Loyal

True Thurs singled home Ian Cihlar with the winning run in the bottom of the 7th inning to lift Marathon to a hard-fought 4-3 win over Loyal in non-conference play on Monday.

4 of the 7 runs scored in the game came in the 1st inning. Loyal scored once in the top of the inning on a pair of singles, a steal of third base and a ground out to lead 1-0. The Raiders came back in the bottom of the inning with 3 runs of their own. Quillan Kunkel led off with a single and scored on a Blake Underwood single to center to tie the game at 1. True Thurs and Drew Woelfel would add two more singles to load the bases with none out. After a strikeout, Owen Chrouser would hit a fielder's choice grounder to shortstop that scored one run and a second run would come in on an error on the 2nd baseman to make it 3-1.

The Marathon offense would go quiet for the next five innings without even a single base hit. Loyal would scratch runs in the 3rd and 6th innings to tie the game at 3 and that would be the score when Marathon came to bat in the bottom of the 7th. Evan DeBroux would start the inning with a walk followed by a sacrifice bunt by Kunkel to put a runner on second. Blake Underwood would ground out for the 2nd out of the inning before Thurs would get Marathon's first hit since the first inning but it scored the winning run.

Thurs had 2 hits while pitching the first five innings and allowing just 2 runs on 4 hits with 4 walks and 4 strikeouts in a no-decision. Ean Shuda pitched a scoreless 7th inning and got the win. Marathon improves to 17-3 on the season will travel to Pittsville for another non-conference game on Tuesday.