BERLIN – Stephen Decatur opened its baseball season Tuesday on a upgraded diamond that includes new dugouts, but had to face the same old foe, James Bennett pitcher Zack Sterling. The Clippers ace shutout the Seahawks for a 10-0 five inning win.

“It was tough playing them in the first game. You come out of the shoot and play the regional champions with a young team like ours,” said SDHS coach Richard Ferro. 

Decatur batters could not solve Sterling who used off-speed pitches to keep the Seahawks off balance all evening.

“[Zack] has been dominant for two years now,” Ferro said. “He mixes up his pitches really well – like throwing breaking pitches on fastball counts – and that’s tough on young hitters.”

The Clippers got to Seahawks starter Brad Stiles in the third inning scoring five runs after loading the bases with no outs. Ferro replaced Stiles with Mike O’Neill, who got out of the inning. In the fifth Bennett scored five more to make it 10-0. Sterling shut down the Seahawks in the bottom of the inning to end the game.

“I don’t like the outcome, but in the whole scheme of things there are some positives,” Ferro said. “I like the way we are here to play know matter what the score is and I like the energy we had. We threw three pitchers today and there wasn’t a big drop off. I like that we hit our cutoff men and we did some things that shows that we have gotten better.”