EHS baseball team can’t rise above adversity
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Emporia High’s baseball team got smoked in a pair of road games against one of the Centennial League’s best teams on Friday, losing to Shawnee Heights 10-0 in Game One and dropping the second game 10-3.
The Spartans managed just five hits in Game One, which ended when Shawnee Heights’ David Gauntt belted a grand slam off Emporia reliever Nathaniel Cuellar in the bottom of the sixth inning to make it a 10-run spread.
“First off, they’re really good,” Emporia coach Beau Welch said. “They pitch it well, they really hit the snot out of it. But with that being said, pretty disappointed in our guys the first game. We’re down 3-0 into the fifth inning, and really not playing well at all, but we’ve got a shot, and we just didn’t handle adversity very well.”
Emporia starting pitcher Jacob Loucks got hit on his throwing hand on a comebacker during the T-Birds’ three-run fifth inning. Loucks was examined but said he could stay in the game, and the T-Birds went on to widen their lead.
James Rodriguez led off the game with a double — Emporia’s only extra-base hit of the first game — and Brett Lechien followed with a bunt single. But Emporia subsequently squandered the first-and-third, no-out opportunity, and Welch believed that early setback was the game’s key moment.
“At that point — I was talking about adversity — that really took the wind out of our sails right there,” he said. “Sad to say, and we talked about it a lot, but we didn’t react very well to that.”
All three of Emporia’s runs in the second game came home on groundouts, with Lechien and Loucks driving in runs in the second and Derek Gifford grounding out to drive in a run in the sixth. Loucks and Keisler each had a double.
Emporia’s Game Two starter, Zach Schuler, got hammered early, as Heights (10-2) pounced on him for five first-inning runs. Chase Speer relieved Schuler after two innings and pitched well, throwing three scoreless innings before giving up a pair of runs in the sixth.
Pulling other positives from the sweep, Welch thought the Spartans were much improved in the second game and liked the fact that they struck out just six times in the doubleheader against Heights’ strong staff.
“Every guy they threw at us was the best guy we’ve seen so far. I’m not exaggerating that,” Welch said. “They had some good arms.”
Now 6-4 on the year, Emporia will host Seaman on Tuesday at Soden’s Grove.
Friday at Lake Shawnee
Game One
Emporia 000 000 — 0 5 4
Heights 300 034 — 10 11 1
WP — Gauntt. LP — Loucks.
2B — EHS: Rodriguez; SH: Barkley. HR — SH: Gauntt.
Game Two
Emporia 020 001 0 — 3 6 4
Heights 530 002 x — 10 11 0
WP — Mapes. LP — Schuler.
2B — EHS: Loucks, Keisler; SH: Barkley, Baker, Gauntt. HR — SH: Baker.
sciguy (anonymous) says...
Kind of a harsh title and tone to use for a high school baseball team, don't you think?
April 24, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )