Red Wolves split pair of games at San Diego tournament

Published 9:49 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

As predicted, the Cedarcrest varsity baseball team relied on good

defense and timely hitting to post its first victory of the season, a 15-5

six-inning affair against Mt. Empire High School in San Diego.

Coach Doug Hall had said his team would have to play good defense

and play “small ball” this year. The

Wolves did not commit an error against Mt. Empire and pounded out 15 hits

— all singles — en route to the win in California.

Cedarcrest lost a chance to sweep the weekend series when a missed

sign and some untimely errors cost the Wolves on Sunday in an 11-10 loss

to Julian High School.

The Wolves had two on and two outs in the seventh inning with

senior R.J. Wickstrom — who had gone two-for-three earlier in the day — on

deck when the game ended on a soft ground ball.

“Marc Medley pitched as well as we expected in the first game. He

gave up some runs, so it was not quite as well as he pitched against

Woodinville (in the jamboree) the week

before,” said Hall. “These two games

showed off our strengths and weaknesses. We played good defense, hit the ball

pretty well but had very little depth in our pitching. We’ll need that

(pitching) against teams in our (Kingco) league.”

The Red Wolves opened league play on Tuesday with a game at

Tolt Middle School against one of the preseason Kingco favorites, the

Newport Knights.

“Everybody expects us to finish dead last this year,” Hall said with

a sly smile. “Maybe that will work to our advantage. I will be very

interested to see how our team responds to the challenge of playing against

bigger schools with long histories of success like you find throughout our league.”

The junior varsity squads had similar results in California. The team

from Cedarcrest swamped its counterpart from Mt. Empire by 10-runs in a

five- inning affair, but lost 8-1 to a mixed squad of varsity and junior

varsity players from Julian.

A total of 22 Cedarcrest players made the trip to San Diego. Hall

said his squad usually carries 14 players, so some reserve varsity players got

a chance to play with the junior varsity on the road trip.