By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

SOUTH PARIS – Wednesday’s KVAC season-opener between Cony and Oxford Hills felt like anything but a late April afternoon of baseball.

Forget the June-like weather and the simple fact that the Vikings were able to play their first game on their home field, rather than at another location in town while they waited for the Gouin Complex diamond to dry out, which has been almost an annual occurrence since it opened. The Vikings themselves even looked in mid-season form during their 11-1 romp over the rebuilding Rams in a game shortened to six innings by the 10-run rule.

All nine Viking starters collected at least one hit and starter Matt McDonnell looked sharp on the hill, yielding four hits, an unearned run and one walk in six innings of work.

“I expected to be a little wild at times, this being my first outing,” McDonnell said. “It was a hot day, so my arm was loose.”

The Vikings banged out 11 hits, six of them for extra bases, had at least one batter reach safely in every inning and scored at least once in each frame except the fourth.

Kelvin DeCato (double and triple) and Kyle Keniston (2-for-4, double) were the only repeat hitters. Derek Varney had an RBI single and scored three times.

“We hadn’t swung the bats that well all preseason. I’m pleased with the results,” coach Shane Slicer said. “They hit the ball and put pressure on the every single inning. With the wind blowing, I thought we hit the ball hard and deep and hit the gaps well.”

Cony defensive mistakes helped keep several Viking rallies alive. Russell Estes earned an infield single on a tentative play by the Rams’ shortstop with one out in the first. He went to second on a wild pitch, then scored when DeCato hit a rocket to left that the outfielder mistakenly broke in on.

“We’re really young, and I think there’s a little more pressure on us to get the learning curve taken care of, get the mental mistakes out of the game and minimilize the physical ones,” said Cony coach Rex Turner, whose team lost nine seniors, including seven starters, from last year.

Cony came back to tie it with an unearned run on a double-steal in the second, but an error at short to start the bottom of the frame, followed by a bunt single by Cory Saunders and a sacrifice fly by Alex Waite, put the Vikings back up for good. Ethan Sutton added an opposite field double to make it 3-1.

Varney’s RBI single extended it to 4-1 in the third. Oxford Hills broke it open with five runs in the fifth, the big blows being a two-run double by Ben Ryerson and an RBI two-bagger by Keniston.

McDonnell worked around a one-out single in the third and leadoff singles in the fourth and fifth. Even though he had just two strikeouts, both of them called, he rarely fell behind hitters. He also got help from some nice plays on the left side of the infield by DeCato and Keniston.

“He had very good command,” Slicer said. “He got them off-balance and changed speeds well and our defense played well behind him.”