The Monterey High School baseball team had a successful, busy weekend as the Wildcats won three games at a tournament in Morgan County, and they capped it off with an 11-4 win over District 5-2A foe York Institute Monday night on the road.
The Wildcats opened the weekend by beating Wartburg 9-8, Oakdale 19-14 and Wartburg again 13-12. Monday’s win marks the fifth in a row for MHS, and it bumped the Wildcats up to 12-6 overall and a positive 5-4 in the district.
“(Monday) was a really big win for us,” MHS head coach John Looper said. “The bottom half of our lineup had a great game at the plate, and Leandro did a good job on the mound as usual.
“The tournament games were long, and all the teams were strapped for pitching. We had to put in some guys that haven’t pitched all year, but they stepped up. We scored more runs than normal, and hopefully that carries over for some of the guys that were struggling. I was proud of how our guys didn’t quit, despite being down in all three games.”
The Wildcats earned Monday’s win with consistent scoring and a surge at the end.
The Wildcats scored one run in the top half of the second, third and fourth innings, but most of their damage came from a burst of three runs in the fifth and five in the sixth. They won the hitting battle 11-7, and they held York to just one run in the bottom of the second, two more in the sixth and one in the seventh.
Leandro Roberts earned the win on the mound after pitching the first five innings with three runs )two earned) off four hits, two walks and five strikeouts, while Dylan Whitehead pitched the final two innings with one earned run off three hits, one walk and five strikeouts. Monterey also overcame committing two errors to York’s one.
Lawson Cantrell led Monterey’s offense by batting in four runs with his nearly-perfect four hits in five at-bats, but Jacob Smith wasn’t far behind by batting in three runs with his one hit in three at-bats. Dawson Hedgecough, Evan Robinson, Lincoln Davis and Eli Phillips also batted in one run each.
Up next, the Wildcats remain home Tuesday for a District 5-2A game against Watertown at 6 p.m.
