By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – The Oxford Hills Vikings were coming off less than 24 hours of rest and were down to their fourth starter. The last thing they needed Tuesday, it seemed, was to face a hard-hitting opponent that ate fastballs, and Western Class A, alive this year.

The Westbrook Blue Blazes were that hard-hitting team coming off a five-day layoff and sending their ace to the mound. But the last thing they needed, it turned out, was to face a determined Oxford Hills team, led by a bulldog No. 4 starter whose fastball couldn’t break a pane of glass but whose ability to throw strikes and keep hitters off balance would tie them in knots.

Backed by an inspired offense and defense, Chris Jennings threw seven gutsy innings to lead Oxford Hills to the first state baseball championship in school history with a 9-4 win over Westbrook at Morton Field Tuesday.

With the win, Oxford Hills became the first Eastern Maine team to win Class A since the 1997 Bangor Rams.

“It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” said junior first baseman Ben Ryerson, who had the only hit in a five-run first inning that gave the Vikings the lead for good.

“Jennings was just incredible. He’s my best friend and he got the job done. Who’d have thought our No. 4 pitcher would win the state championship?”

The Vikings went through their top two starters in their semifinal win over Edward Little Monday and lost their No. 3 hurler to a late-season injury. Even their No. 4 starter’s availability was left briefly in doubt when Jennings dislocated the middle finger on his throwing hand in the Edward Little game.

“We really didn’t have a lot of options,” said Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer. “We didn’t talk about the hoopla. We just talked about throwing off-speed pitches on fastball counts.”

Nerves had more to do with Jennings’ rocky first inning than his injured finger. He walked the leadoff batter, then with one out, gave up a 400-plus foot bomb to center field on a 2-1 offering to Andrew Kierstead that put the Blazes up, 2-0. It was Kierstead’s seventh homer of the season.

“(The finger) is not a factor in a state championship game. You go out there and the adrenaline’s pumping, you’re not feeling anything,” Jennings said. “I was real nervous. I got down to a few guys. One guy hit it 380, 400 feet, and after that, we got settled in.”

The Vikings (17-3) helped him get settled in with a five-run first, aided by the wildness of Westbrook ace Jordan Purington (four walks, one hit batsmen) and the Westbrook infield (two errors).

Oxford Hills loaded the bases with one out on two walks and an error, then got on the board when Kierstead bobbled a Chris Roy chopper to first, allowing Kyle Keniston to score.

“We just didn’t make the plays early on in the game that we needed to,” Westbrook coach John Eisenhart said. “That turned out to be the difference, really, in the game.”

Ryerson then slapped the first pitch he saw from Purington to left to score Kelvin Decato and Matt McDonnell to put the Vikings in front for good.

“I was just looking for a fastball to hit and drive the opposite way,” Ryerson said. “It was big for us to start out like that because coach said the way we were going to win was to start off with a big inning.”

Oxford Hills didn’t need to swing the bat to keep the inning going against a clearly rattled Purington. The senior righty hit Russell Estes to load the bases, walked Corey Saunders to score Roy, then issued a free pass to Jennings that scored Ryerson and made it 5-1.

The walk to Jennings chased Purington from the game in favor of Kierstead. The burly southpaw held the Vikings in check for the next two innings while the Blue Blazes (16-2) tried to chip away. They got a run in the second on an Adam Hamilton RBI single and another run in the fourth on a double by Stephen Burton to make it 5-4.

The Vikings added a big insurance run in the fourth on doubles by Keniston and McDonnell. That helped Jennings (five hits, four Ks, two walks) find his groove, as did a nice 1-4-6-3 double play to nip a potential sixth-inning rally in the bud.

“Give him credit. He did a good job keeping us off balance,” Eisenhart said. “We’re a great fastball hitting team, and he did a great job. He really mixed his speeds well and spotted his fastball when he needed to.”

The Vikings broke it open against Kierstead in the sixth, scoring five runs on RBI hits by Decato, McDonnell (two doubles) and Roy.

“What more could you ask for than to go into the last inning with a five-run lead?” Jennings said.

The final out came on Jennings’ 94th pitch and settled into the glove of Saunders in right field, followed immediately by a mob scene around Jennings, who somehow emerged from the mayhem with all of his fingers and other limbs still in place.

“He’s a tough son of a gun,” McDonnell said of Jennings. “We told him coming in there was nothing to lose, just try to mix it up and throw off-speed stuff. They’re not used to it.”

Here’s something the Vikings will have to get used to – 2005 Class A state baseball champions.