By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The bats of the Sprague Baseball team were hot to start Thursday’s non-league game with Sheldon at home.
Over the course of the first two innings, the Olympians scored ten runs and led 10-1 going into the third inning. They gave sophomore Sam Hoda some breathing room to work on the mound knowing he had a cushion to work with after his first inning success against the Irish.
“Just letting it roll, letting it happen. Stringing together great at-bats and stringing together as many as we could and we did pretty well,” said Riley Wilson. “It was a barrell party out there. Hitting is contagious and making it happen.”
“That win was not me, it was our whole offense,” adds Hoda. “That first inning I got the three-up and three-down and we got five runs. The second inning, five runs, it’s huge momentum wise. It’s how we win games right there.”
Hoda went the distance in what became a 10-4 victory for Sprague on this day. And despite Sheldon stringing together some hits of their own, including giving up two Home Runs, Hoda remained mentally tough and locked-in. He recovered often and proved that he could be an up-and-coming arm for the Olys moving forward with this season and beyond.
“Those two Home Runs, they were tough but I bounced back. The guys helped me, it was a super great team win,” said Hoda, who finished with six strikeouts in the win.
This was Sprague’s third game in four days, going 3-0 on that run and still having one more game ahead of them on Friday at Lakeridge. They are hoping that the momentum that they’ve built, especially coming off of Thursday’s victory, can carry over against the Pacers on Friday to close out this week.
“It’s going to be huge, we got a big four game week and we came out on top with the first three. A lot of momentum going into tomorrow, so it’s going to be a fun one,” said Wilson. “(This week) has been everything we could have wanted and we came out with three wins. It hasn’t been perfect all the time, but we’ve been scrappy and we got the job done at the end of the day.”
Parker Kruse led the Olympians with two hits and drove in 2RBI’s. Camden Buchheit drove in a team-high 3RBI’s and Paul Herb drove in another 2RBI’s.
