Bust out the orange slices, clean up the minivan and make sure there’s enough Big League Chew for everyone.
The Emporia A-16 Blues are turning back the clock this week at the Legion Regional tournament.
First step was to turn those State tournament-induced frowns upside down. Next step was transforming into the team everyone expected them to be.
Turns out, all it took was someone telling them it was OK to have fun again, and the Blues had a blast in an 8-0 run-rule victory over the Fargo Jets on Thursday night at Soden’s Grove.
Jacob Loucks pitched a near-perfect game — facing two more than the minimum in five scoreless innings — and the defense and offense backed him up, which was a big change from a week ago.
“Last week, we thought we had to be serious and take care of business,” catcher Remington Pinick said. “We just went back to kind of T-ball style of baseball. If somebody makes a mistake, it’s all right.”
There were few mistakes made by the Blues in the Regional tournament opener. A week ago in their State tournament opening loss, the Blues wasted Loucks’ two-hitter by committing seven errors, which turned into four unearned runs.
They were eliminated in their second game when the offense failed to come through, leaving 12 runners on base in an 8-7 loss to Nickerson.
“Last weekend, we were real tight,” coach Jerry Cook said. “There’s a lot of pressure put on those guys from last year even, from different sources. Monday we came out, and said, ‘Hey, you’ve just got to get back to the way you play the game. You’ve got to have fun. If you come up serious and get tight, you’re going to make errors just like last weekend. We came out and had fun and that’s what can happen.”
As Cook predicted, the defense looked relaxed and was almost mistake-free against Fargo. Emporia had one error — second baseman Brian Keisler bobbled a ball in the second inning — but that was quickly erased by a double play.
Loucks kept the ball low and got the Jets to ground out nine times. Loucks had only three strikeouts, but the Jets rarely made solid contact and he gave up only two hits.
“I had the goal in my mind that we were going to come out and we were going to win the first game, and I was going to do whatever it takes to do that,” Loucks said. “Our defense played really great today. It’s nice to know that our defense was there behind me today.”
The offense also had Loucks’ back. He gave himself the lead in the first with a two-out RBI single. Brett Lechien hit another two-out RBI single in the second to add to the lead, and then the Blues poured it on with a six-run third inning.
“We just kept putting the pressure on them, we never let up,” Loucks said. “The games that we’ve lost, we just go on cruise control. Today, we just kept putting it to them.”
While the Blues never let up, they also used patience to put Fargo away. Matt Fry, Ethan Hall and Loucks opened the third inning all drawing walks to load the bases.
Pinick got the scoring started with an RBI single down the right field line. Thomas Lowe, Lechien and Matt Fry also had RBI singles during the six-run inning. That was all that was needed for a run-rule win in five innings.
The Blues move into familiar territory with the win: the winner’s bracket. They once again believe they’re contenders, and with a win tonight against Bloomington, the Blues will move onto the semifinals.
“Of course the confidence was hurt,” Loucks said. “We felt like we were one of the better teams in Kansas, so we should have gone further in State. Yeah, this is definitely a confidence-booster, but we knew what we were capable of doing, so this isn’t really anything out of the ordinary.”
Legion Regional tournament
Thursday at Soden’s Grove
Emporia Blues 8, Fargo 0 (5 innings)
Fargo 000 00 — 0 2 2
Emporia 116 0X — 8 8 1
WP — Loucks. LP — Venaas.
2B — FAR: Haugen.