By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
STAYTON, Ore.– Cascade’s Slade Hudson was once again dominant in his Complete Game start against Stayton on Wednesday afternoon.
The Cougar senior came out firing. Hudson and his defense blanked the Eagles through the first three innings while his offense gave him an early lead with a run in the top of the third against Liam Brown.
Hudson has been Cascade’s ace all year, but when it came to the Oregon West Conference series’ this year, he’s been their Game 2 Starter. A role that he’s embraced and it’s benefitted the Cougars who are in serious 4A Playoff contention coming down the stretch of the season.
“Me being able to go on Wednesday’s have been helping us because it’s right in the middle of the week and it gives us room to throw whoever the other two day’s. It’s been big for the team,” said Hudson.
Brown, an up-and-coming pitcher in his own right, went to battle with his senior counterpart as through the first four innings. A Jacob Born single during that third inning spurt by Cascade was the lone run he gave up going into the fifth inning.
His offense had a spurt of his own in the bottom half of the third inning, Stayton taking a 3-1 lead after a three-run inning. Ryland Thiessan and Oliver Hunt drove in the three runs for the Eagles, who looked as if they were beginning to time out Hudson going into the back-half of the game.
And then. Cascade caught them off-guard.
It started in the top half of the fifth inning. They stormed back into the game, scoring four runs to flip momentum into their favor. They led 5-3 at this point.
With a little more pip in their step, the Cougar defense came out refocused and settled back in as they had over the opening three innings. Cascade pitched a shutout inning the the bottom half of the fifth before putting another four run spot in the top half of the sixth inning.
The four-run inning was fueled by a three-run home run from Blake Jackson and an RBI single by Caden Bitikofer as the Cougars capitalized on the Eagles’ pitching inconsistencies as Cascade took a 9-3 lead into the bottom half of the sixth inning.
“I mean no one expected that Home Run out of Blake right there, but those two innings were big for us. We had a tough fourth inning, but we were able to bounce back and keep our heads up and put some runs together,” Hudson said. “We knew we had to battle back, so us getting that little bit of breathing room with the runs was great.”
The Cougars were able to ride the momentum of this inning-and-half run through the finish line, taking the game 9-3 to improve to 7-4 in OWC play and 8-14 on the year. The win also evens up the series at a game apiece after Stayton took Game 1 on Monday.
The two teams will meet up again Thursday in the
“It’s a long game. Seven inning game, so you got to stay up from the beginning until the end. You can’t let one mistake turn into two, one bad play affect you,” said Stayton Head Coach Kyle Baker. “We didn’t make the adjustments that we needed, but I know that we got a group of fighters on our hands, they’re going to be resilient and get back to work.”
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Photos By Jeremy McDonald
