Athlete of the Week: Hillsdale's Ro Mahanty

So the senior took it upon himself to settle the score in regulation. In the final week of what has been a legendary Knights baseball season, Mahanty produced the team’s first walk-off win of the year by launching a two-run home run to defeat San Mateo.

“It was one of the rare feelings you get at the end of a game,” Hillsdale manager James Madison said. “It was a rare moment for me and the entire team. I don’t think since I’ve been here we’ve had a walk-off where the guys could pile up at home plate like that.”

And pile up they did. The win was a pivotal one in the scope of the Knights’ undefeated league record. They would go on to secure it with an 8-5 victory in last Thursday’s regular-season finale at San Mateo. But last Tuesday’s walk-off at Hillsdale was the settling of a more personal score.

Last season, the Bearcats, with a run in their final at-bat, celebrated a 6-5 victory at Hillsdale. This year, the Knights were looking for payback.

“We had made it as a team decision that we wanted to put an emphasis on this game because we didn’t want to lose to them,” Mahanty said.

The Knights’ leading hitter with a .483 batting average this season, Mahanty dialed into his fateful seventh-inning at-bat. With Andrew Yarak on base, Mahanty got an outside breaking ball on the first pitch. He spit on it, just as he did his previous at-bat. In that previous at-bat, he got eaten up by an inside fastball on the following pitch. And he wasn’t about to be fooled twice.

“The last at-bat, I had popped out on an inside fastball,” Mahanty said. “So, I kind of anticipated it being inside right around the knee area. And it was. It was kind of in the exact same area.”

Mahanty got his pitch, dropped the head and crushed a booming shot down the left-field line. Off the bat, however, it seemed the ball was destined to curve foul.

“It looked like a ball that was going to hook for sure,” Madison said. “But he hit it so hard he was able to keep it fair.”

Mahanty wasn’t even convinced it had the distance as he watched the flight of the ball sail towards the foul pole.

“I was prepared for it to go foul or die right before the fence,” Mahanty said. “I had no idea how hard it had been hit. I didn’t know where the wind was going to take it, so I wasn’t banking on getting that hit. So, I was really excited when I rounded first and saw it going over.”

Mahanty indeed cashing in and was greeted at home plate by his teammates, who formed a horseshoe before converging on him once he touched down for: “a lot of head hitting and back slapping,” he said.

It was a key moment as the usually even-keel Knights got to celebrate not just an emotional win, but also celebrate the winding down of a season like no other throughout Hillsdale history. The Knights have lost just one game while posting a 26-1 overall record. Now as they enter the Peninsula Athletic League playoffs as champions of B-league PAL Ocean Division, the Knights are looking forward to testing their mettle against A-league opponents.

Hillsdale’s only loss this season came to Burlingame out of the A-league Bay Division.

“It just means we have a lot to prove going into the postseason,” Mahanty said. “Because a lot of the question is, is Hillsdale that good? And I would like to prove that we are.”