By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
STAYTON, Ore.– Sprague’s Boyd Messman enters this Summer looking to build some momentum for his freshman year at Bushnell University with Lydo’s Lab, a Eugene-based travel ball squad.
In Lydo’s first doubleheader of the season, Messman went 2-for-4 with 2RBI’s in the two games against the Post 58 Crushers as the two squads split Saturday’s doubleheader. Lydo’s Lab took Game 1 11-1 in five innings before the Crushers of Stayton took Game 2 8-7.
“Moving forward, I want to be the best teammate ever, I think more team things than me things. That’s the goal,” Messman said. “Defense and offense are things that I can work on. My defense can pick up a little more, I think. The last few years, the offense came around. I think defensively I want to get quite a bit better this Summer.”
In the opening game of the season, Lydo’s Lab came out swinging and played strong defense. Scoring six runs within the first two innings, leading 6-0 going into the third inning and never looking back in their 11-1 victory to open the season.
The Crushers, prodomintaly kids from the High Schools from around Silverton, Stayton and Turner, refocused for Game 2 of the doubleheader. They jumped out to a 6-0 lead by the third inning, only to see Lydo’s Lab respond and tied things up, going into the bottom half of the sixth inning tied at seven.
Post 58 held strong, eventually taking Game 2 off a balk that scored James Collier from third to close out the 8-7 victory on the Crushers Opening Day of the season as well.
“It was nice to see what we can do,” starts Stayton’s Colton Connally. “It’s the energy. If we can get the energy up, there’s nothing that can beat us. That first game, we really didn’t have energy. We were flat, and we lost by a pretty big margin. We came back with energy in the second one. We started with a lot of energy. Midway through the game, we got flat again, and they started getting runs on the board, and we got the energy back up and pulled off the ‘W’.”
Post 58 will have another doubleheader on Sunday against the Baseballism Wet Sox starting at 2pm. Lydo’s Lab will head to Vancouver, Washington, on June 13 for a Father’s Day Weekend Tournament at Mountain View High School.
“The first game will always give you an idea of what a team is, but not the final product. You have the whole Summer…two, three months to work together, build together, and hopefully, by the end of the year, you’ve improved a lot from the first couple of games,” said Messman.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
