The Durango baseball team has started the season on the right foot after beating Bayfield 22-12 Thursday afternoon at Aztec High School as part of a three-game tournament.
Durango improved to 1-0 overall with the win while Bayfield fell to 0-1 overall with the loss.
“They swung it really well,” Durango head coach Austin Anderson said about his team. “We hit a lot of line drives, a lot of barrels. Pitching was pretty good for still being March 7 and in game one. It was good to get our feet wet game defensively. We always have work and more to be done but it was really nice to see the bats come alive and get our feet wet defensively and on the mound.”
Durango finished the game with 19 hits compared to nine for Bayfield.
Sophomore Tate Rose and junior Cully Freeney each finished the game with three hits. Senior Ian Szura and junior Jack Englund each had two hits as well, with Englund finishing with the lone home run for the Demons as well and four RBIs. Sophomore Dawson Mclnnes and junior Elijah McCrady each had two hits and four RBIs as well.
Bayfield’s Brendan Heydinger had three hits while juniors Austin Wilmer and Cole Wagner each had two. Wagner had the lone home run for Bayfield as well as 6 RBIs.
Freeney pitched four innings for the Demons and gave up four runs, four hits and one home run while striking out four batters.
Wilmer pitched three innings for the Wolverines and gave up four hits, eight runs and struck out two batters.
The Demons got off to a good start and led 3-1 after the first inning. Neither team scored in the second inning and then the Demons stretched their lead to 9-1 after a six-run third inning. Bayfield then outscored Durango 3-1 in the fourth and 6-5 in the fifth to cut the Demons lead to 15-10. But Durango finished strong with a 7-2 sixth inning to close out the game.
“We really handled adversity well today,” Anderson said. “We had one rough inning and we were able to come back from that. The place to improve is really just communication, making sure we're all on the same page, even coaches between the players and players between each other.”
Durango is back in action on Friday at 12:30 p.m. against Page High School from Page, Arizona at Azec High School.
