Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Lincoln Wins District Tournament
LINCOLN CLAIMS DISTRICT TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONSHIP OVER PRAIRIE GROVE
PRAIRIE GROVE — The 4A-1 regular season, conference title holder Lincoln Wolves added the second jewel to their championship crown when they blanked the Prairie Grove Tigers 7- 0 in the 4A-1 district tournament finale held May 5 at Prairie Grove’s Rieff Park.
The Wolves ( 16- 6), got an impressive pitching performance from Drew Harris and on offense exploited an error prone Tiger defense which allowed five unearned runs.
“We put the bat on the ball and made them make some plays,” said Wolves’ coach Brad Harris. “They weren’t able to come up with a few plays, but that’s part of baseball. I thought defensively we played well and you can win a lot of ball games with good defense and good pitching.”
Drew Harris (4-1), who pitched a one-hitter against Prairie Grove on April 18, a game which secured the regular season championship for the Wolves, toed the rubber again for Lincoln in the title game of the tournament against their U.S. 62 rival, and the results remained the same.
Harris simply proved to be too dominant for the dormant Tiger offense. The junior righty pitched all 7 scoreless innings, allowing a paltry 3 hits, with 7 strikeouts.
“My hat is off to Drew, he did a great job,” said Tigers’ coach Mitch Cameron. “He did a great job locating his pitches, throwing his curveball for strikes, and when he does that he’s tough. You have to give all the credit to Drew right there.”
The game had the look of a classic pitcher’s duel early in the contest, with Prairie Grove’s Logan Gragg matching Drew Harris pitch for pitch for three-and-two-thirds innings. However, in the top of the fourth frame Gragg’s defense committed an inning-extending, two-out error which allowed the Wolves to score a pair of runs.
Another two miscues in the sixth stanza aided the Wolves in plating 5 more runners, which with Harris on the hill, proved to be more than enough run support.
“I thought Logan did a great job on the mound. He’s had a couple of rough outings, but I will take that outing right there. We just did not make enough plays defensively behind him and we did not execute at the plate when we needed to,” Cameron said.
After both squads put up gooseeggs for three innings, the Wolves finally breached the run column in the fourth stanza. Dalton Simmons and Kaleb Ayers sandwiched a pair of base-on-balls around Lane Maddox, who reached base on a fielder’s choice, that juiced the bags with two outs. Cord McCaslin then plated Simmons and Maddox on a ground ball to shortstop that was thrown away by the Tigers trying to nab McCaslin for the force out at first base.
In the bottom of the sixth inning Ayers singled with two outs, then scored along with Payton Hulse after back- to- back Tiger errors on ground balls hit by Hulse and McCaslin. Drew Harris and Emilio Maruffo were then hit by pitches which jacked the bases for Dakota Riggin. Riggin emptied the bags with a three RBI double to left field, bringing the score to 7-0. The Tigers managed just one hit by Derek Arguello in their final at-bat which allowed the Wolves to claim the victory and hoist their second piece of hardware this season.
Riggin paced the Wolves’ offense with his double and three RBIs, while Ayers, Hulse, Drew Harris and Bama Hill all finished with 1 hit each. Arguello, Nick Sugg and Brandon May garnered the only hits for Prairie Grove in their losing effort.