North Adams baseball swings big, sets records in boom-or-bust week

North Adams has shown it can blow games open, but the Green Devils have not yet shown they can do it every night. That split personality defined a stretch in which the Seaman club went 3-5 overall, then played five games in six days and finished 2-3, leaving Ryan Unger’s team searching for steadier pitching and cleaner defense as Southern Hills Athletic Conference play tightens.

The high point came in a 29-2 run-rule rout of Ripley on April 7, when North Adams announced itself at the plate with a 10-run first inning and 17 hits overall. Senior Colin Tolle went 6-for-6 with five runs scored and four RBIs, a line that tied him for second in the Ohio High School Athletic Association single-game hits record book. The state record book lists seven hits as the top mark, so Tolle’s night fell just short of history but still landed among the rarest offensive performances in Ohio high school baseball.

Tolle was not the only Green Devil to make the record book that night. Senior first baseman and pitcher Cooper Roush was hit by a pitch four times, another unusual statistical line that underscored how much North Adams controlled the game from the start. The Green Devils did not just win; they overwhelmed Ripley before the Indians could settle in.

That kind of offensive burst has made North Adams dangerous, but the rest of the week showed the other side of the ledger. The Green Devils handled West Union 11-1, then ran into tougher results against Trimble, Lynchburg-Clay and Paint Valley. A contemporaneous recap said North Adams fell 17-1 to Paint Valley on April 12, then another said Lynchburg-Clay beat the Green Devils 17-1, dropping them to 3-5. Those scores point to the problem Unger is trying to solve: when the bats cool or the opponent punishes mistakes, North Adams has not yet had enough consistency on the mound or in the field to stay in control.

That matters in a crowded SHAC race, where every midweek double-up and back-to-back conference date can reshape the standings quickly. North Adams has already shown it can put up runs in bunches. The question now is whether the Green Devils can string together enough reliable innings to turn one explosive week into a season that lasts into conference and postseason conversation.