With the Emporia High baseball team searching for the answers to end its nine-game losing streak, Spartan coach Mike Strickland changed his batting lineup Friday night against Junction City.
The moves produced positive results for the Spartans, who won the first game, 6-3, to snap their losing skid. Emporia dropped the second game, 13-3.
The doubleheader was played in Junction City even though Emporia was the home team, since Soden’s Grove (construction) and the Trusler Sports Complex (prep work for ESU’s doubleheader today) were both unavailable.
“The win in Game One was a good thing for our kids,” Strickland said. “The kids were frustrated with a lot of things, because in a lot of those games, they were playing well, they just weren’t seeing enough results.
“They fought back and found a way to win tonight.”
In changing the batting order, Robert Keisler moved from the two hole to the three, Taylor Anderson moved from the fifth spot to the second and Cole Armitage moved from the three hole to the fifth. Taylor Clark stayed put at the fourth spot.
That quartet came up big in the fifth inning of Game One with the Spartans trailing 2-0. After Michael Knight singled and Tyler Ast reach on a bunt, a few batters later, Keisler drove in Emporia’s first run with an RBI single to make it 2-1.
Clark then drew a walk to load the bases for Armitage, who came up with a bases-clearing triple to rocket the Spartans ahead, 4-2. Jared Johnson capped the EHS scoring with an RBI single to score Armitage, giving Emporia the 5-2 lead and some new life.
“We had some guys step up and get some big hits for us,” Strickland said.
Junction City scored once in the fifth inning, but Emporia added an insurance run in the seventh inning, which was enough for EHS starter Jared Krause, who went all seven innings and allowed three runs on four hits.
Errors haunted Emporia in Game Two, as two first-inning gaffs aided Junction City in scoring four runs, which would be all the scoring the Blue Jays would need in taking the 13-3 victory. EHS committed four errors in all.
Still, Strickland was pleased that his squad continued to fight despite the early hole.
“I was proud of the way they kept at it,” the coach said. “The guys played hard all night long, and I don’t feel like they gave up at all. Junction City just out-hit us.”
Friday at Junction City
Game One
Emporia 000 050 1 — 6 8 1
Junction City 000 210 0 — 3 4 1
Krause and Clark. Anderson, Hubbard (5) and Acousta-Corrillo. W — Krause. L — Anderson. 2B — JC: Zimmerman. 3B — Emporia: Armitage.
Game Two
Junction City 402 023 2 — 13 9 2
Emporia 001 020 0 — 3 6 4
Keisler, Ast (3), Knight (7) and Clark. Kamm, Cuddy (7) and Acousta-Corrillo. W — Kamm. L — Keisler. 2B — JC: Acousta-Corrillo. Emporia: Anderson, Clark.
Comments
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.