Peñasco sweeps Questa in doubleheader
The Questa Wildcats have had a tough baseball season so far.
Two out of the three wins for the Wildcats have come via forfeit. Their one win came against Centennial when the two teams combined for 59 runs. Questa won 38-21. They’ve given up over 20 runs in six of their 13 games.
This is Shannon Aragon’s first year as the skipper for the Wildcats, and he hopes to build their program up in the same way he has for the West Las Vegas Dons and the Robertson Cardinals when he coached those teams.
Part of it means discipline and instilling a certain kind of mindset for the team. “My kids need to toughen up,” he said.
Currently, the team only has three seniors, only two with any experience playing baseball. One of the seniors couldn’t make it to the doubleheader against Peñasco on Tuesday (April 19) because he was cleaning ditches.
In the first game, the Peñasco Panthers won by mercy rule, 14-2, in the bottom of the fifth inning.
According to Panthers baseball coach Dominic Garcia, the team committed few errors and had timely hits after Questa would walk his players on base.
In between games, centerfielder Juan Arellano promised he would hit a home run in the second game.
Eighth-grader Ricardo Leon Jr. took the mound for the Wildcats in the second game. He didn’t follow through on his pitches after the windup, resulting in slow pitches to the plate. The trajectory of his pitches went from high-to-low, but with little action on them. The pitches were just waiting to be smashed.
Leon Jr. got himself into trouble with the bases loaded in the first
inning. He managed to escape the inning with only two runs allowed.
The Wildcats did hit some doubles off of Peñasco’s Adam Archuleta but couldn’t keep up with the Panthers offense.
In the second inning Arellano delivered on his promise when he connected for a three-run home run past right field. The whole team was waiting for him at home plate, where they would do a choreographed celebration with Arellano using a baseball bat as a selfie stick. The score was 10-0 at this point.
When the inning was over Garcia talked to his team, “Keep having fun out there. Win this with class. No need for all that extra.”
The Panthers would go on to win the second game, 20-2.