Vandals finish 2-2 at Alamo tournament

Eureka, Tonopah and Beaver Dam participated in the Pahranagat Valley Invitational baseball tournament recently in Alamo.

For the Vandals, in their first game with Tonopah, the Muckers scored quickly with four runs in the first inning via two doubles, a groundout, and a single. The Muckers added three more runs in the second inning and five in the third on the way to a 12-0 win. Josh Garcia got the only hit for the Vandals.

In the team’s second game on Friday, they had to play defending state champion Pahranagat Valley. The Panthers who are strong again this year, banged out 10 hits, scored in every inning, and limited Eureka to just one hit, by Bryson Wells in the fourth inning. Wells was the losing pitcher. He worked one and one-third innings, allowed six runs, four hits, struck out two and walked two.

Christian Higbee took the win for Pahranagat Valley. He went all five innings, allowed one hit and struck out six.

Vandal coach Kia Davis said, “Errors hurt us quite a bit the first day and we struggled to hit the ball. We made contact, just didn’t get the ball out of the infield. And two of our top players had to sit the bench the first game.”

Saturday turned out to be a double-header with Beaver Dam, which they won handily by identical scores of 17-4.

The first game, Eureka came out strong, scoring five in the first and nine in the second. They collected 10 hits, but did commit three errors.

Mikel Lacovara was 3-for-3. Gage Hayward did even better as he was 4-for-4 with two doubles and two singles.

Koltin Anderson and Wells combined on the mound. Anderson going four innings, allowing four runs, no hits, but three walks, and six strikeouts. Wells came on in relief, struck out two and walked one.

The second game saw a big 10-run third inning propelled the Vandals to another 17-4 win.

Beaver Dam held a 4-3 lead after the first inning, but Eureka added four in the second and then the 10 runs in the third. Two doubles, by Josh Garcia and S. Lacovara, plus eight walks and a RBI single by Well, helped account for the outburst.

Garcia worked four innings on the mound, gave up five hits, struck out five and walked three.