Newtown Knights 6, Shelton 4: The golden pitching arm of Colton Sposta and the booming bat of Ben Stoller led Newtown to victory in the opening fall game under the lights at Fairfield Hills Field on September 10. Sposta, who threw a complete-game shutout in the summer travel-league championship game, scattered five hits and yielded just one earned run over the first six innings. Eric Sutton pitched a strong seventh inning to pick up the save. Stoller doubled, tripled, stole two bases and scored two runs. Trailing 1-0 in the fourth inning, Newtown’s Jon Hull walked and stole second. With two outs, Stoller fouled off six pitches before ripping a long triple down the left field line, scoring Hull. Shelton’s catcher tried to pick Stoller off third, and he raced home with the go-ahead run. With the game tied 2-2 in the sixth inning, Nick Heron and Hull singled, and Brandon Cooper walked to load the bases. With the infield drawn in, Sutton slapped a grounder that the shortstop couldn’t handle, and Heron and Hull scored. Stoller walked, and Mike Newman reached on a third-strike wild pitch to reload the bases. Austin Ekstrom blooped a clutch, two-RBI single down the right-field line to score Sutton and Stoller.

Harlem 6, Newtown Knights 3: Newtown loaded the bases in the last inning but fell short against a powerful New York City squad. Newtown’s Jon Hull pitched brilliantly, striking out five batters and shutting out Harlem during the first three innings. He pitched 4 1/3 innings before tiring, yielding two runs but only one earned run. Newtown escaped further damage in the fourth inning, when left-fielder

 Colton Sposta caught a wicked line drive and threw a strike to catcher Austin Ekstrom to nail a Harlem runner tagging up from third base. Stoller led the offense with two singles, two runs scored and three stolen bases. Other offensive highlights: Reid Schmidt knocked in a run with an RBI groundout, Ekstrom slapped a double down the right-field line, and John Hampford crushed a single up the middle and scored a run.

Ridgefield 10 Newtown Knights 8: The Knights rebounded from a 5-0 first-inning deficit but couldn’t take the lead all afternoon. Auditioning a team of players competing for the high school junior varsity, Ridgefield smacked 12 hits. Newtown retaliated with nine hits, including two by Jon Hull and two by Eric Sutton. Sutton crushed a two-RBI triple over the center fielder’s head and ripped a two-RBI single. Newtown made three outstanding defensive plays. Center fielders John Hampford and Austin Ekstrom each fielded base hits and threw perfectly to cutoff man Ben Stoller, who wheeled and threw to Hull at catcher to nail runners coming home. Another Ridgefield runner was cut down trying to stretch a double into a triple, when left fielder Colton Sposta raced after a ball and threw a strike to cutoff man Nicky Sajovic. Sajovic turned and threw perfectly to third baseman John Lebinski to retire a sliding runner. Sutton pitched well in relief, shutting out the opposition in the fourth through sixth innings.

Newtown Knights 13, Waterbury 12: Trailing 12-9 in the last inning, Newtown battled back with four runs last Friday night at Waterbury’s Bucks Hill Field. Clutch singles by Ben Stoller and Dean Demers sparked the rally. Stoller singled sharply to right field to move Jon Hull, who had reached on a fielder’s choice, to second. Hull and Stoller pulled off a successful double steal, and Hull scored on a wild pitch. Eric Sutton walked and later scored when Demers lined a two-RBI single to right. Brandon Cooper lifted a towering fly that was dropped by the left fielder, and Demers scored. Hull, who felt ill throughout the evening and was knocked out of the game for a few innings when struck by a foul tip at catcher, gamely re-entered as a pitcher and struck out the side to get a save. Stoller led the offense with three hits, four runs scored and two stolen bases. Sutton slapped two singles, Nick Heron had an RBI single and Dan Poeltl, playing his first game in more than a year after being sidelined by a leg injury, rapped a two-RBI single. 

Newtown Knights 8, Manhattan (Yorkville) 7: Playing against a powerful New York City team, the Knights pulled off a rare triple play and rebounded from a 7-4 sixth-inning deficit to win in extra innings in the first game of a doubleheader Saturday at Fairfield Hills Field. In the sixth inning, Jon Hull slapped a ground single up the middle, and Ben Stoller and Reid Schmidt walked to load the bases. Hull and Stoller scored on an error by the right fielder, and Brandon Cooper’s line single to left tied the game. Manhattan’s first two batters in the seventh inning singled. With both Manhattan players running, Newtown relief pitcher Schmidt got the next batter to pop up a sacrifice-bunt attempt. Schmidt caught the ball, threw to first baseman Stoller for a double play and Stoller fired to second baseman Jon Hull to complete a triple play. Schmidt shut out the hard-hitting Manhattan team in the sixth through ninth innings. With two outs and the potential winning run on second base for Manhattan in the ninth inning, Schmidt picked the runner off second base. Newtown botched the rundown, tossing the ball way over the third baseman’s head to the left-field fence. Schmidt alertly raced to the fence, holding the runner at third, before striking out the final batter to get out of the inning. Schmidt set up the winning run by tripling to center. He scored the winning run on a beautiful safety squeeze bunt down the first-base line by Dean Demers. Demers also lofted a fourth-inning double, and Newtown shortstop Eric Sutton smashed a long triple to center, singled, scored two runs and played solidly in the field. Pitcher Colton Sposta threw 87 pitches, including 53 strikes, to keep Manhattan at bay for the first 4 2/3 innings.

Newtown Knights 15, Manhattan (Yorkville) 5: Newtown exploded for 16 hits in six innings to sweep a double header and improve to 4-2. Eric Sutton led the assault, crushing an inside-the-park home run to the right-field fence and a long triple to right. He also singled and walked, scored four runs and upped his batting average to .500. Jon Hull and John Lebinski each slashed three hits, and Ben Stoller, Austin Ekstrom, and Nicky Sajovic had two hits each. Stoller, who leads the team with a .611 batting average, also had two RBIs, scored two runs and stole two bases. Lebinski pitched well, yielding just two hits and three runs before tiring in the fourth inning. He kept Manhattan’s hitters off balance with a sharp-breaking curveball. Center fielder Sajovic threw a strike to nail a runner trying to advance from first to third in the fourth inning. Ekstrom pitched the final 2 1/3 innings to pick up the save.