By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
THE DALLES, Ore.– One of Scio’s goals this year is to face adversity. On Thursday afternoon, the Loggers rose to the challenge, responding when tested against defending 4A state champion Astoria in the finale of the Steve Garett Memorial Tournament.
The Lady Fish jumped out to a 5-0 lead on the Loggers going into the third inning of the contest.
Astoria’s bats came alive in its opener against The Dalles/Dufur on Thursday, and the momentum carried into the tournament finale, where Astoria plated four runs in the second inning after a Finley Cameron solo home run in the first.
“We got our bats rolling against Scio and The Dalles, so both games,” said Astoria Head Coach Kent Israel of getting the bats going. “We’ve been waiting for that to happen and it finally happened, so we’re going to be building off of that for sure,”
Scio trimmed the deficit to 5-3 with a three-run third inning, but Astoria pushed its lead back to 8-3 with a three-run fourth. The Loggers rallied late, scoring five of the game’s final six runs across the fifth and sixth innings to pull within one heading into the seventh.
It was 9-8 Astoria going into the top half of the seventh inning with the momentum on the side of Scio after Astoria had the momentum on their side to start the game.
“It was huge considering we lost a big part of our team last year, but we’re up there with a 4A State Winning team and we’re a 3A State Winning team. That game could’ve gone either way. It would have gone our way had we cleaned things up defensively, and if we saw them later in the season…it’ll go our way,” said Scio’s Cam Dalke.
The Loggers committed four errors, each coming at critical moments that either set up or directly led to Astoria runs, allowing the 4A squad to maintain its lead as Scio rallied.
“One of our goals this season is to face adversity. So not rolling over when things get tough. We talked about this during pre-game and our team goals this season and we haven’t strayed from that at all. I couldn’t be prouder of the newer people on our team and the younger girls on our team, we have a young pitcher and she battled the whole way and got us out of innings where we ran ourselves over at times,” Dalke said.
Astoria turned a one, two, three inning with Taryen Wray in the circle to close out the 9-8 victory. Wray came in for relief of Kate Barendse in the sixth inning after Barendse went five-and-a-third innings. Wray and Barendse combined for ten strikeouts in the victory.
“It’s huge for the team morale and to know that we can do it. Hats off to Scio, that’s a super, super good team. That top of that order is lethal,” Israel said of Scio. “The Dalles game was a great game and that game (against Scio) we held them off…Kate threw awesome, that was her first five inning game as a starter on Varsity and threw really well against Scio.”
Barendse struck out six batters in her outing. Wray, coming off of a nine strikeout game against The Dalles, struck out four batters in the inning-and-two-thirds she pitched to close out the Scio game.
Dalke led the Loggers with three hits and drove in two runs and Macy Johnson contributed two hits. Grace Ferguson struck out five batters pitching for the Loggers, who will open 3A Special District 3 play on Tuesday against Blanchet.
Astoria will host Banks on Tuesday at home.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
