Sports

Bottineau tastes defeat as regular season begins to wind down

By Tyler Ohmann

07/17/2012

The Bottineau legion baseball team had a taste of something that they haven’t had to taste too much of this summer—defeat.

Bottineau fell in close, hard-fought games against Velva on Tuesday and Harvey on Friday to drop their section record to 9-4 on the season, and have their first losing week of the season.

First, on Tuesday Bottineau traveled to Velva to take on the defending section champs.

With some of their lineup gone for the week Bottineau had to shuffle up their positions in the field and lineup, which made for a few errors.

“We just made a couple of mistakes,” Aus said. “It was a close game, but we just made a couple of defensive errors, and threw a couple of runs away.”

Bottineau did score first as Taylor Milbrath scored on a Cody Brooks single in the first inning.

Bottineau added to their lead in the second as Devin Bercier scored on a Garrett Lynnes single.

However, Velva came back and scored once in the third and twice in the fifth to take a 3-2 lead, which they would not relinquish.

Cody Brooks pitched a complete game scattering five hits and striking out two Velva batters.

Brooks also came through at the plate with two hits and an run batted in (RBI).

Zach Johnson was solid in the bottom of the lineup, getting on base in all three plate appearances, including a single in the fourth inning.

On Friday Bottineau played a doubleheader in Harvey, with the first game counting toward the section record.

Again Bottineau played hard, but fell in a closely contested game.

Harvey quickly built a lead, getting four hits and scoring three times in the opening frame against Bottineau pitcher Devin Bercier. Harvey scored again in the second inning to go up 4-0, but Bottineau climbed back with two runs in the third inning.

Harvey scored once in each of the third and fourth innings to take a 6-2 lead heading into the fifth inning.

“Harvey came to play, they hit the ball really hard,” Aus said.

In the fifth, Bottineau climbed back into the game after a big fly by Martin, but the momentum swing was not enough to claw back for a win.

“Ging hit a three-run homer and that was big for us,” Aus said. “We just couldn’t get a run the last two innings, but it was tough, they got out to a six-run lead and we had to play catch up the whole time.”

In game two Bottineau did manage to get some revenge by clubbing their way to a 7-2 win in a four-inning game.

Brooks, Lee Schneider and Hunter Braaten each had a pair of runs as Bottineau scored three times in the second and four in the third to take an insurmountable lead.

Schneider pitched ran into a little trouble after allowing five hits and two runs in an inning and two-third, Lynnes came in to close out the game.

Lynnes shut down the Harvey offense and put up goose eggs in both the third and fourth innings.
Defense was a bit suspect for Bottineau throughout the week as they uncharacteristically made a few errors. However, absences forced Bottineau to put some players in unfamiliar positions in the field.

“We probably had a couple kids that were a little out of position,” Aus said. “But Taylor Milbrath, Cody Brooks, Ging Martin, they’ll do anything to step up and slide into different positions.”

Aus was elated with the play from the team, and the never-die attitude that the players possess.

“They play hard right to the end, it is not like they get down and have to get back up again,” Aus said. “It will be fun to see how it goes.”

Bottineau, who is 19-6 on the season, plays one more game at home against at 5 p.m., Thursday against Mohall before the playoffs begin.

The section tournament, which will be held at Bottineau, begins on July 25 and goes through July 29.

The team who emerges champion at sections will advance to state, which is August 1-5 in Lamoure.