Baseball loses to Jackson

On Wednesday, the Oran High School baseball team traveled to Jackson to resume the suspended game from March 29th that was a part of Notre Dame Showcase.  Rain had stopped the contest after one inning of play with the Eagles on top of the Class 5 Indians 1-0. 

Todd Priggel and Kole Simms had produced back-to-back one-out doubles to for the Eagle tally and Conner Kern had worked around an error and a walk to toss a scoreless first.

When the game resumed, Oran who had played the previous two days and with a game against arch-rival  Advance looming the next day was in a pitching dilemma

Dane Shands got the call.  He worked a scoreless second.  Jackson had two one-out singles but a 6-4-3 double play ended the threat.  In the third, however, after the first two were retired, a walk, a triple, a single, another walk and two singles and a third walked gave the Indians a 3-1 lead.

Offensively Oran only had two baserunners after the game was resumed.  One reached on an error the other on a base on balls.

Shands (0-1) took the loss.  He went two innings and gave up three runs, all earned on five hits.  He walked three and struck out two. Kern, who started, went one and walked one and struck out one as well.  Simms went one inning and gave up one run, earned, one hit, two walks and struck out one.  Dawson Menz tossed an inning and was charged with seven runs, only three earned on six hits.  He walked two and had one strikeout.

Coach Joe Bickings said "[It was a] rough day but not a bad day.  The weather was a lot better than it was the first time we tried to play them about 2 weeks ago.  This was a game that both teams wanted to make up and with the rain, we’ve got this spring so far it’s tough to find a day to finish the game.  This was really the only day that worked for both teams and unfortunately for us, it was our 3rd game in a row with a 4th against Advance the next day.  We threw some kids out there that haven’t got a lot of mound time this year or really much ever.  I thought we competed early on and hit some balls fairly hard but they were right at the defense.  That’s baseball and you move on.  For us to compete at a high level we need to see the arms that the bigger schools have that we won’t see constantly.  Jackson’s number 4-5-6 probably would be a class 1 or 2 teams ace.  It’s an eye opener for the kids to be able to see how different levels compete and hopefully, they see it and want to get better.  It’s tough getting beat by the 10 run rule but it should also be a motiv"

With the loss, Oran fell to 6-3.