Stephenville (21-10-1) scored early and hung on for the win in the opening round of the UIL area baseball tournament. It is a best of three series so Kennedale (20-10-1) has a chance to dust off the bats and take one from the Yellow Jackets tonight to stay in contention.
After the disappointing loss, Assistant Coach Paul Trantham just shook his head {{more}}in a way of answering what happened. But, he did add, ?We can beat these guys.?
Game two is tonight in Stephenville at 7:30 with the third game scheduled for Saturday afternoon at Weatherford College beginning at 3 p.m.
Stephenville got a double, two singles and two walks combined with sacrifice to score three runs in the first. They were able to get what turned out to be the winning run in the second, making the score 4-1.
A walk and two throwing errors combined to get Kennedale on without a hit in the bottom of the third, but Stephenville struck back with a bases-loaded walk in the top of the fourth for a 5-1 margin.
The Wildcats scored two runs in the bottom of the sixth to cut their deficit to two. The inning started out well with Aaron Williams walking and Ryan Box hitting a single putting Williams on third. Tyler Perez grounded out but Williams scored and Alan Sather (designated runner for Box) moved to third. Sather scored on a wild pitch and Austin Eggleston reached on a walk. Score 5-3 with one out and one on. However, with a change of pitchers, the next two Cats batters flied out followed by a groundout.
Kennedale needed a strong 7th but didn?t get it when they went three up and three down.
A strong performance in the loss was turned in by Wildcat relief pitcher Kolton Hess who in 3 innings allow one hit with no runs and recorded 5 strike outs.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E STP 3 1 0 1 0 0 0 5 6 1 KNDL 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 3 3 0 L: Josh Taylor
HBP: Josh Taylor
WP: Kolton Hess
Pitches-Strikes: Josh Taylor 88-41, Kolton Hess 61-31
Groundouts-Flyouts: Josh Taylor 2-5, Kolton Hess 2-2
First pitch strikes-Batters faced: Josh Taylor 7-24, Kolton Hess 8-16
