It turns out that the team water boy for the Northwestern Lehigh Tigers is also a good baseball player. Justin Holmes messed up on mixing the Tigers Gatorade Monday, but he made up for it with his bat by blasting three home runs in an 11-2 win over Blue Mountain. The home runs led to seven RBI on the day for the Northwestern junior.

“I’m kind of the team water boy and I made the Gatorade before the game today and it’s terrible, but I guess it worked,” said Holmes after some good-natured ribbing from his teammates.

Rafe Perich opened the scoring for the Tigers in the third inning when he launched a two-run home run to center field. After a single by Nick Henry, Holmes hit his first home run, just to the left of where Perich’s landed and Northwestern Lehigh had a 4-0 lead.

The Eagles picked up two runs in the top of the fifth, but Northwestern came right back in its half of the inning, which started when Perich reached on an error and Henry was hit by a pitch, setting up Holmes for more heroics. He turned on an inside pitch and lined it out to left-center field, giving the Tigers a commanding 7-2 lead.

Dylan Witkowski then worked a walk and a double by Ben Boyer put runners on second and third with nobody out. Ryan Kensinger singled up the middle to plate Witkowski and a passed ball allowed Boyer to score from third as Northwestern put up five runs in the inning.

Perich led off the sixth with a double and one out later, Holmes replicated his second home run of the day when he again turned on an inside pitch and hit it out to nearly the same spot as his previous home run, giving the Tigers a 9-2 lead that they would hang onto.

In addition to providing offense, Perich shut down the Eagles over the first four innings of the game and Tanner Romig handled the pitching the rest of the way.

The nonleague win over Blue Mountain followed an 11-1 win over Notre Dame (Green Pond) last Friday that handed the Crusaders their first loss of the season and left Northwestern as just one of two undefeated teams in District 11 baseball, with Liberty being the other.

The Tigers followed up the Blue Mountain game with a 16-9 win over Wilson that saw Holmes pick up three more hits. Randall Zack also had three hits, including a double and a triple, driving in three runs.

“It’s about going into every game knowing that we’re the team to beat,” said Holmes of the team’s success. “It’s good to have that confidence and the lineup can hit and we’ve got deep pitching.

“We’ve known since youth baseball that we were going to have a good group and would be a very good team. That group of players are all seniors now and it’s great to have us together and be playing so well.”

Holmes is being heavily recruited as a quarterback, but it would not be out of the realm of possibility for him to have a college or two interested in him for baseball. His brother Derek plays baseball at Moravian, but Holmes will not be following him to a college baseball career.

“I love football too much to pass up that opportunity,” said Holmes with a smile. “It’s nice to think about and I would be flattered but I really want to play football at the college level.”

Coach Duran Porrino likes the lineup that he can put together and has been impressed with the work ethic and drive of his players. Carter Welch, who transferred back to Northwestern after playing his freshman season at Central Catholic, has been a big offensive part of the lineup that he feared as a pitcher going up against the Tigers as a freshman in a district championship game.

“I go back to what Carter said about facing us when he was at Central Catholic,” said Porrino. “He said it was tough as a pitcher because there weren’t any easy outs anywhere in the lineup and I think it’s a lot like that now. This is an easy team to coach because they don’t have to be reminded about things, even things like helping with the field and cleaning up the dugout after a game. They really are self-motivated, and they police each other. We have a lot of guys who have been four-year starters and they know what it takes to win.”