Stratford’s Carson Brown, Andrew Mitchell, Will Gould, and Kevin Hahn all blasted home runs en route to a 22-4 victory over Fort Bend Marshall Thursday afternoon at the Ewell Jackson baseball tournament at Dulles High School.

From start to finish, it was all Spartans.

Brown got things fired up in the top of the first inning with a solo home run. Soon after, Jake Miller doubled and eventually scored a run off of Mark Benninger’s RBI single.

This improved Stratford to 5-0 on the season, and coach Tony Mardirosian looks for success out of this tournament as well as getting repetitions for all of the players.

“What we really want to do is make sure we play five games,” Mardirosian said. We want to get the pitchers some work, our batters some hits, and get to work on some ground balls and fly balls. Of course we also want to have some fun.”

And it was apparent they were enjoying themselves. The Spartans extended their lead in the second inning starting with Mitchell’s homerun over the centerfield wall followed by Brown’s RBI triple that scored three runs. Hahn’s RBI double also added two more runs to give Stratford an 8-0 lead.

“We wanted to get off to a good start. The kids hit the ball well and played good defense,” Mardirosian said. “We also had good pitching. And that’s what we wanted.”

On the mound for the Spartans was Mitchell, who held the Buffaloes scoreless until the third inning. But the third inning was when Stratford really opened the game up, even more so when Mitchell blasted his second home run of the evening.

According to Mardirosian, Mitchell is getting his stroke back.

“He (Mitchell) was struggling a little bit last weekend, but he did a lot of work in the cage this week,” Mardirosian said. “During BP (batting practice), he straightened himself out and today he hit the ball a long way.”

Brown’s RBI single scored Jerry Young and Gould and Miller also had an RBI single. After a few walks and a couple hit-by-pitches, Gould hit a grand slam. Hahn finished the scoring frenzy (14 runs) with an in-the-park home run to Brown.

But in the bottom of the third, Marshall put some runs on the board.

Ronald Carroll tripled and DeAndre Chandler earned the RBI on a fielder’s choice. With the bases loaded, Jermaine Lawson ripped a three-run double.

Stratford advanced to face the winner of the Fort Bend Dulles- Scarborough game at 3:30 p.m. Friday at Dulles. Marshall will play the loser at 6 p.m. at the same location.

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