STATE CENTER — Hunter Polley was the “EST” for West Marshall baseball on Tuesday night.

The sophomore pitcher was steady in a tricky situation against Hampton-Dumont-CAL, and the Trojan offense rewarded him with an explosive fourth inning and a 12-1 victory at Schilling Field.

West Marshall, ranked No. 2 in Class 2A, improved to 9-1 and plays at South Hamilton on Wednesday night.

The Bulldogs knocked in an unearned run after a couple infield errors and a base hit with no outs in the fourth.

“If we start thinking about things we can’t control, that game gets to 5-3, 5-4,” West Marshall head coach Jerod Brown said.

Instead, Polley got the next batter to ground into a 6-4-3 double play and picked up a strikeout, his fifth of the night, to get out of the inning.

“We battled some adversity,” Polley said. “It could have gone better but it could have gone the other way, too.”

As a result, West Marshall coaches awarded Polley with a custom WWE-style championship belt for being named the “EST” of the game. The title, a reference to WWE’s superlative superstar Bianca Belair, represents the Trojans’ core values of “Excellence, Selflessness, and Toughness.”

For most of the past decade, Brown has also invited his team over for a nacho bar and Wrestlemania.

Jeff Ridout came up with the design and custom-ordered the belt to honor Trojans that meet the gold standard.

“It’s taken us a few years to figure out with some kind of acronym and this was something we thought was pretty good,” Brown added.

The Trojans got on the board right away in the first inning on an AJ Dee sacrifice fly, but left the bases loaded and left two on in the second inning.

In the third, an RBI double for Dawson Bear and RBI single for Grayson Shaver, plus a wild pitch and a balk, gave Polley a little run support at 5-0 after three complete.

Polley and the Trojan defense handled business in the fourth after the hiccup to start the inning, and in the bottom of the fourth, West Marshall sent 12 batters parading to the plate, with Shaver, the No. 9 hitter in the order, adding a couple RBIs. Shaver was 2-for-3 on the night with three total runs batted in.

“We started to attack a little bit more, barrel up on some balls,” Shaver said.

West Marshall returns virtually everyone from last year’s substate finalist team, including Bear, Dee and 2023 T-R Baseball Player of the Year Owen Siegert — all three are batting over .400 to start the season.

“We do everything with intent,” said Shaver, a senior. “Every swing in batting practice, everything. And that consistency is just the biggest thing for us.”

The Trojans have three more games in the next three days — at South Hamilton on Wednesday, back home vs. Don Bosco on Thursday, and on the road at Greene County on Friday.

“It’s easy to just be content with winning the games,” Brown said. “But if you’re a team that’s trying to get to that high level, you’ve got to keep finding those areas to improve. We’re doing a good job on defense and with our pitching, but our biggest growth area is execution at the plate when we have runners at third base with less than two outs, or runners on second with nobody out. We have to be more consistent in that area.”