By ALEX SPONSELLER

The Western Hills baseball team won its opening round playoff matchup at home on Saturday morning.

The Cobras were led by starting pitcher Alex Milano, who allowed no runs on just one hit while striking out a whopping 16 batters to set the pace. The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the sixth inning, but Western Hills would get the game-winning runs when Chris Barboza and Reese Zarrella were walked in to take the 2-0 lead.

“It was a pitching contest, it was a stressful game but luckily we pulled it out in the end. (Milano) has been a go-to pitcher all season and is pitching at a high level right now. At the middle school level, the expectation is for them to come out and hopefully not walk batters, if they hit the ball we have a good defense. He exceeded our expectations, we only gave up one hit, it was a phenomenal game,” said Western Hills coach Don Ceseretti.

Although the Cobras were excited to see an electric pitching performance on the mound, the bats were quiet for most of the contest as they only recorded four hits.

“We were facing a pitcher with a sneaky delivery, so our batters struggled. We only put up four hits so our bats went cold. The good thing is that we can support that with the pitching that we have,” said Ceseretti, who hopes the team will get off to a faster start in the next round of play. “We need to jump out early. You can win games with your pitching, but you can’t win a game without scoring a run, so we’re going to rely on our pitching as we have been and try to put up runs early.”

The Cobras squared off against Bishop Hendricken at home on Wednesday, but the results were not available at press time. Ceseretti expected another tight battle, as the Hawks took home a 7-6 win the last time the two clubs faced off in the regular season.

“We’ll have to manage our pitching, see what we can do there. Hendricken is a good team, they have good pitching and can hit the ball so it’s going to be a good contest.”