Opening round game Wayne County defeats Monticello in 48th District Tournament
May 29, 2012 (Menafn - The Wayne County Outlook - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --The Wayne County Cardinals hosted cross town foe Monticello, last Monday night at Cardinal Field, in the opening round of the 48th District Tournament. The Cards were awarded the tourney's number one seed via a tie breaker with Southwestern and entered the matchup with a 16-14 mark overall, which included an impressive 5-1 district mark. The Trojans entered the tournament with a 7-19 mark, but were coming into the contest as winners of four of their past six games, which included wins over Jackson County, Bell County, Lynn Camp and Clinton County. The teams met twice during the regular season with Wayne County claiming a 5-0 home win on April 16 and following that up 8 days later with a 14-1 decision, at Memorial Park.
The winner would advance to face Southwestern, a 5-4 home winner over McCreary Central earlier in the day, in the championship game.
Wayne County used offensive fireworks to total 16 hits and 21 runs, which were more than enough run support for the pitching duo of sophomore Landon Hutchison and senior Zach Doss. Hutchison pitched 3 scoreless innings with seven strikeouts against 0 hits to notch the win, while Doss fanned 5 in two innings while allowing just one hit and one run.
"Landon and Zach were both very effective on the mound and anytime a team is in that first game of the district tournament, it's so important to get off to a fast start, which we did both offensively and defensively. I thought we came out sharp and had some really good at bats, which once things got rolling we hit the ball pretty well," said Cards head coach Shane Blevins.
Dagan Shelton, a junior first baseman, led the offensive charge with a 4 for 4 effort with 4 runs scored and 3 RBIs, while Kyle Gehring, Tanner Bell, Trey Blevins and Steven Hall all added 2 hits apiece.
Blevins and Hall paced the squad with 4 RBIs each, while Blevins teamed with Hutchison and Bell to score 3 runs each.
"All of those guys helped get us off to a big start and I think that is a very positive sign to have that many people have big nights in an elimination game. Anytime we can go through the lineup one to nine and be that solid it's a very big offensive night. I also thought our defense was sharp, credit our catcher Ryan Corder for a big throw out to end the first inning and really allowed us some momentum going to the plate early," said Blevins.
Monticello, whose season ended at 7-20, was limited to just 1 hit
and 1 run, both by All-Tournament selection sophomore Jacob Stinson.
The Trojans used 4 different pitchers to allow 21 runs, but defense allowed several additional runs to score, as the Trojans totaled 6 fielding errors.
"Monticello battled us to a 5-0 game here earlier in the season and came into this game playing pretty well, so we knew we had to play well if we wanted to keep our season alive. I credit our focus in practice and the maturity we showed as a ball team that wants to do good things, while trying to send our seniors out the right way,"
said Blevins.
Details on the Southwestern game in a related story inside this edition of The Outlook.
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