By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
STAYTON, Ore.– The defense of the Stayton baseball team in Friday’s 4A State Play-In was as good as you would hope in the win-or-go-home game against Marshfield.
With Mason Silbernagel getting the start on the bump, going six innings with permitting one run on three hits and striking out two, he got the ball into play and his defense made the stops in Friday’s 7-1 victory.
“It’s a lot easier to pitch when you have a strong, powerful team behind you. Just looking back at it, I’m just so proud of how we played today,” said Silbernagel. “We just got to take this energy from this win, and we got to work hard in practice on Monday. Just keep working on our fielding and stay clean. At the plate, we just got to get that energy and keep going.”
The game was knotted at zero through the first five innings as both defenses held the offenses to a few baserunners. Stayton had two base runners in scoring position in the third inning that would have broken the game open, but no luck. Marshfield had a run come across in the fourth off a two-out fly-ball, only to see it taken off the board after the runner left third early and a heads-up Stayton defense taking advantage of the head start to keep the game scoreless going into the fifth.
“This was a team effort all the way. We take it all the way 0-0 across the board until the fifth. They scored one, and we got one back. We shut them out in the sixth and then scored six on them in the bottom of that inning. It’s huge,” said Hudson Hughes. “We’ve always wanted a shot to make a run for it, and I believe that this is our opportunity to take that time and go into next week and play another baseball game.”
The Vikings were the first team to break the scoreless time when Trenton Holmes drove a run in off a ground out in the top half of the fifth inning. The game twas quickly back to even tied at one when Colton Connally drove in the tying run with an RBI single in the bottom half of the fifth inning.
That tying hit, plus a quick top half of the sixth inning of the three-up and down variety, seemed to be the spark that the Eagles needed going into the bottom half of the sixth inning. Cause it was then where the Stayton bats came around.
Five hits, a walk, and an error led to six Eagle runs to turn what was a defensive game into a one-sided affair. Mason Emmert, Owen Mitzel, Connally, and Hughes all drove in runs off RBI singles that gave Stayton some breathing room.
And from there, momentum on their side, the Eagles closed out the game in the top half of the seventh inning. Connally came in for relief for Silbernagel and turned three straight outs after surrendering a lead-off single to send Stayton into the 4A Bracket for the first time since 2023.
“It can’t get better than that. Six runs, it can’t be much better than that. It was a 1-1 ballgame,and then we figured it out. The team came together, executed some offensive plays, and got it done,” said Connally of the sixth inning. “We had Mason on the hill. He was giving us weak contact, we made the plays, and good things happen. Mason supplied me with the juice, six innings of one-run baseball, and all I had to do was go out there with a 7-1 lead and throw some strikes and hold them.”
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
