Staff photo / Preston Byers LaBrae’s Austin Rowe braves the chilly conditions during the Vikings’ home win Monday vs. Garfield.

LEAVITTSBURG — LaBrae outlasted Garrettsville Garfield in a weather-shortened matchup between two of the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference’s best baseball teams.

Amid nearly sideways snow flurries, the Vikings’ Landon Brunstetter hit an RBI double to right field, driving in a pair of runs to give LaBrae a 7-5 lead in the bottom of the sixth inning. Moments later, the umpires officially called the game due to weather, giving the Vikings the victory and Brunstetter the de facto walk-off.

“From sun to rain to snow, I mean, we had everything except for what we really wanted, which is warm weather,” LaBrae coach Ed Anthony said. “Very different game. I’ll give our kids credit, they didn’t give up. At the end, we came back against a very quality opponent.”

Both coaches said the umpires told them they wanted to try to make it through the sixth inning, but Garfield’s Mike Paes said the flurries had become a hindrance in the final inning.

“That last half-inning there was pretty brutal,” Paes said. “They said they were gonna try to give them one more at-bat. They didn’t, for sure, say that this was it. They said they’d like to get them their at-bats in the sixth. And then it was snowing, you couldn’t see and they kept playing on. So it was tough.”

“…I understand they’re trying to get the sixth inning in,” Paes said, “but if you’re going to call the game and end the game early after six innings, you might as well make it so you could see the ball, because we couldn’t see. Our right fielder, he couldn’t even see the ball with all the snowflakes.”

Per Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) rules, since five or more innings were completed, the game’s result is official. Had the weather forced the umpires to stop the game before the completion of five innings — heavy wind and light rain began before the fourth inning — the game would have been suspended and scheduled to be completed on another day.

Unfortunately, the snow that came arrived at potentially the worst possible time. The G-Men led from the top of the fourth inning on after running up LaBrae starter Brunstetter’s pitch count up and forcing him out of the game during the fourth and capitalizing on some wild pitches and fielding errors.

After a two-run second inning, Garfield responded with a pair of runs in the third, only to be followed by a Lucas Glaser RBI single to give the Vikings the lead back.

In the subsequent half-inning, Garfield pitcher Aidan Hill tripled to right field, scoring two in the process and helping the G-Men take their first lead of the game.

Both teams scored a run in the fifth inning as the wind and light rain continued to batter the players, many of whom took cover in their respective dugouts.

In the top of the sixth, the rain worsened before transitioning into snow, which seemed to only make it worse for the pitchers.

Reliever Owen Boone hit back-to-back batters with pitches but managed to strike out three to keep the G-Men from adding to their one-run lead.

Hill could not do the same, however. The Garfield pitcher, nearing the allowed maximum number of pitches, walked the leadoff batter before recording a strikeout, his 11th of the game.

Hill then surrendered a single and a walk.

Although Hill managed to strike out the penultimate batter, a passed ball gave Easton Armstrong the opportunity to score the game-tying run.

Brunstetter then walked up, found contact on the first two pitches for foul balls and then sent a line drive into right field for the eventual walk-off hit.

“That’s the player he is,” Anthony said. “Even though he’s a junior, he’s a big time player for us. He has been, in the early part of the season, pitching him and Austin, really a nice one-two punch for us. He didn’t have his best stuff today, but we also didn’t help him at times. I think we had three or four errors in the game, which is pretty uncharacteristic for us.”

Monday’s loss will serve, Garfield hopes, as a stinging lesson while attempting to find success later in the season.

“You’re right here with the best team in the league the last three years. You got to make the plays to overtake them,” Paes said. “And I’ve been saying that for a while now. We have not fielded cleanly all year, so we just gotta make the plays behind our pitcher, because, anytimes Aidan’s on the mound, I’ll trust him against anybody.”

Monday’s win will likely be very valuable in the league title race for LaBrae, which is now 3-0 and has apparently learned to bundle up when playing the G-Men.

“This reminds me of last year when we played them in snow like this,” Anthony said. “So I told them, I said, ‘Maybe we should just turn the baseball into a football game.'”