Sweet Home’s baseball players opened their season Tuesday, March 18, with an 11-5 win on the road at Madras.
“Any road game like that is always a tough one, sitting on the bus for three hours,” Coach Evan Teter said. “But they got off the bus ready to go. They were locked in from the start.”
The Huskies got going early, scoring in the top of the first inning and then adding three more runs in the top of the second. Madras responded with two runs in the bottom of the second, leaving Sweet Home with a 4-2 lead. Both teams added runs to make it 6-4 before the Huskies ran out to an 11-4 advantage. The hosts scored one more at the end of the game .
The Huskies got doubles from sophomore Kyle Zajic and juniors Luke Rosa and Cohen Gutierrez.
Zajic started on the mound for Sweet Home and had some discomfort with the mound’s configuration, Teter said.
But he worked his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning, then was relieved by Gutierrez.
“Free bases hurt us on defense,” Teter said. “We gave up a couple of runs they probably shouldn’t have scored.”
The difference, he said, w as that the Huskies didn’t throw in the towel; they battled back.
“Luke pitched the last 3⅔ innings – he only threw 43 pitches,” Teter said. “He was super efficient, he pitched a lot of strikes and he held guys to ground balls.”
The Huskies also executed a number of double plays, in one case with a runner in scoring position and one out.
“That was a pretty key moment,” Teter said. “It was a good way to end an inning.
“Our dugouts were really active. We were playing small ball, getting guys in the top of the lineup scoring runs.”
He saw more backwards K’s than he wanted to see, Teter said.
“That was not great. One of our goals this year was to really limit watching strike three go by.
“We’ve been working on their mentality, their confidence in themselves. Our young guys still need to get more confident.”
Up next for the Huskies is the Hidden Valley Tournament in Grantas Pass Thursday through Saturday, March 27-29. They will host North Salem Tuesday, April 1.