After delays due to the basketball playoffs, the Kingston Redskins finally got their baseball season underway in claiming two wins in three games at the Broken Bow Spring Break Festival.
Coach Darron Henson’s club fell 3-2 in an opening extra-inning thriller against Stigler but bounced back in blanking Coalgate (5-0) as wellasedgingChecotah(3-1).
Kingston looked like it had the Stigler contest won by breaking a 1-1 deadlock with a tally in the top of the eighth inning as Lander Burkhalter tripled and scored on a Hayden Seeney double but the Panthers sliced together a two-out rally for a pair of runs in the bottom of the stanza.
The Redskins scored the first run of the contest in their half of the second inning after Seeney walked, advanced on a sac bunt and came all the way around on a Jaksyn Martin two-out bunt single.
Stigler answered with a run in the third frame and that’s how it remained with a pitching duel into extra innings. Seeney worked the first five stanzas for Kingston, yielding one run on two hits with a strikeout and two walks.
Five Redskins each tallied a hit with Burkhalter, Seeney, Brock Rumer, Martin and Conner Waller all contributing one.
Ewan Weaver provided thepitchinggeminthesecond outing as he twirled all seven innings, scattering four hits and five strikeouts for the complete game shutout.
Kingston scored twice in the first thanks to twoout RBI singles from Blane Henry and Reid Patterson and never looked back from there.
Weaver and Patterson each pitched in two of the team’s eight hits. Rumer, Burkhalter, Henry and Waller added one apiece.
The duo of Henry and Rumer were the pitching catalyst in the Checotah triumph as they combined to allow only three hits and one unearned run over seven innings.Theyfannedfiveand walked just two batters.
Trailing 1-0 in the third stanza, Kingston strung together an offensive flurry to claim the lead it would never relinquish. A pair of free passes set the table for Burkhalter, who delivered a double that plated both runners. They added a final tally in the sixth on a squeeze bunt by Martin.
Weaver, Burkhalter, Seeney and Patterson tossed in one hit each for the Redskins.