UFO days is always a fun weekend for us, having two games here.”

Manager Tom Sauve

ELMWOOD — The Elmwood Expos fended off the UFO Days invaders over the weekend winning home games against Plum City and Ellsworth to enter the playoffs with confidence.
Elmwood beat the Plum City Blues 5-0 Saturday off the back off a nine-inning, 112-pitch shutout from Mason Dado with just two hits allowed and eight strikeouts. He matched the two hits he allowed with two hits of his own at the plate. Spencer Trainor wrenched a two-run shot to highlight the offense.
Against Ellsworth on Sunday, Brecken Ponath tossed eight innings, allowing just one run. Like Dado, Ponath made up for it with an RBI single. Seven Expo batters picked up a hit in the game, with Kyle Trainor leading the way with a double off the wall to lead off the bottom of the first and homering in the seventh in a 3-1 win.
“Any time you get a start like Mason had yesterday where he went 112 pitches in nine innings, it takes a lot of stress off of us for the rest of the weekend,” Manager Tom Sauve said. “We probably could have went nine with Brecken today, but being this close to the playoffs, his pitch count was getting a little high. We want to win this game, but we also want him to be doing this in two weeks in the playoffs.”
After losing a few games to league teams from the Class A division, Sauve said it was nice to get a couple of wins against tough Class B teams.
“It was big. We’ve been playing some games against some of the A teams in the league that are pretty good, and we’ve been scuffling a little bit,” Sauve said. “We just kept talking about, hey, we’ve just got to play our brand of baseball against our level of teams.”
Ponath, one of the younger players on an experienced Elmwood team, trusts his team to make plays for him.
“Just trusting my guys on defense. Just really trying to get ahead in counts,” Ponath said.
He found himself in multiple bases loaded jams including one with nobody out against the Hubbers, but the trust took him a long way. Ellsworth was putting a lot of balls in the air, so Sauve told Ponath to keep pounding the zone and let the outfielders track down the fly balls.
“He does a really good job of pitching to contact,” Sauve said. “He’s okay with letting our defense play good behind him.”
The great weekend from the Trainor boys did not go unnoticed from Sauve and Ponath.
“They’ve been huge,” Ponath said. “They’ve been putting a lot of runners on, putting runs in. It’s huge. They’re mashing right now.”
Having a 2-0 weekend to close out the regular season would have meant a lot no matter what; however, to do it during UFO Days made it all the more special.
“UFO days is always a fun weekend for us, having two games here,” Sauve said. “It’s a tiring weekend for us. We go right from here to the parade. We seem to always win two on this weekend because everyone’s kind of engaged and ready to go.”
Going into the playoffs, Elmwood has a ton of arms they can trust to eat up innings. In a format that requires many games to be played in one weekend, the Expos are set up nicely to try to win the State title they missed out on by just a game a year ago.
“We’re going to need a lot of arms, and we’re going to need our guys to step up big time,” Ponath said. “Pitching is going to be huge.”