MORAN A workmanlike effort propelled Marmaton Valley Highs baseball team Thursday to the Class 2-1A regional semifinals.
The Wildcats had little trouble dispatching Crest, 11-0, to open regional play.
Marmaton Valley (7-11) advanced to Fridays semifinal matchup with second seed St. Paul (9-10), with the winner advancing to the championship game later in the day for a berth in the state tournament. (Fridays results were not available prior to deadline.) The state tournament begins next Thursday in Great Bend.
The defeat ends Crests inaugural season of high school baseball with a 3-17 record.
We didnt want to use up all of our pitching today, so Im glad that worked out, Wildcat head coach Derek Scharff said. Hopefully, itll be a long day for us (Friday.)
Marmaton Valley scored in all four innings it batted, including a six-run second inning.
We put the ball in play pretty well today, Scharff said. We need to get it down, we popped it up too much, but we hit well.
A pair of errors sandwiched around a Lane Bahnsen single led to two first-inning runs for Marmaton Valley.
Justice Pugh had the key hit, a two-run single, in the bottom of the second, to push the lead to 4-0. A walk and error followed before Caiden Elliott and Isaac Heskett delivered RBI singles.
By the time the dust settled, Marmaton Valleys lead was 8-0.
Meanwhile, the Wildcats Elliott, Pugh and Gage Griffith combined on the one-hit shutout, allowing only a first-inning single to Crests Stratton Mc-Ghee.
This is not the way we wanted to end the season, Crest head coach Roland Weir said. We hit the ball, just not hard enough. Moran did a great job of taking advantage of our mistakes. We made a couple of errors that didnt help us and Moran hit the ball well. Hats off to them.
Crest missed out on a pair of scoring opportunities.
A Wildcat error and Mc-Ghees single put runners on second and third with two out in the first before Elliott induced a soft liner off the bat of the Lancers Jacob Halloran.
Hayden Hermreck walked to lead off the fourth and stole a base, but was tagged out attempting to advance to third on a ball in the dirt, and still nobody out. Pugh struck out McGhee on the next pitch and induced a ground ball from Halloran to end the threat.
The Lancers lose three seniors Austin Hendrix, Caleb Stephens and Hayden Seabolt and should bring in three, four or five freshmen, Weir said.
