By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– It was one of those gritty games that can go a long way for a team. Sprague is hoping that their 2-1 victory over Lakeridge Friday evening will help propel them into Central Valley Conference play and into the remainder of the season ahead of them.
The bats weren’t finding the gaps that they had hoped for, the Olympians scoring twice in the bottom half of the first inning off a two-run Jace Dalton single that had put Sprague up 2-0 after the opening inning.
From there, the Pacers put the fire to the feet of Sprague. They cut the deficit in half with a run in the third inning off an error and threatened to tie it up at two with a runner on second before the Olympians got out of the jam.
Lakeridge, on two separate occasions, followed that third inning loaded up the bases only to see Sprague dug in their heels and turn away the Pacers. Dalton, who started the game on the hill, did the first bases loaded situation in the top half of the fifth inning, and Holden Rasmussen got the one in the seventh to polish off the victory.
“It’s massive. Everyone kept their heads down and kept grinding. The bats, the hits, weren’t falling, but no one put their heads down, and everyone went out there and stepped up on defense, and it was fun,” said Dalton.”It shows that our team isn’t going to quit, and we’ll move into this into league. We got a lot of momentum, and this is a great win for the program.”
For Rasmussen, who came in for relief in the sixth inning for Dalton, made quick work of the Lakeridge bats in the sixth before the Pacers had one last surge in them. With one out, Lakeridge had the tying run on second before the bases eventually got loaded with two outs on the board.
The nerves were high, but the junior put it aside and, in three-straight pitches with the bases loaded in a 2-1 game, got the final out to preserve the victory.
“It was a little scary. The communication was there at the end, and we had a lot of support. We knew we had each other’s backs, and that helped a lot with keeping the confidence up and not getting down and just keeping it up,” said Rasmussen.
The Dalton-Rasmussen duo combined for a three-hitter and struck out eight in Sprague’s sixth victory of the season.
Photo’s By Jeremy McDonald
