The West Central 16U team qualified for the South Dakota VFW 16U State A Tournament by winning two games in a best-of-three regional against Milbank on Monday, July 29th.
West Central 9, Milbank 2
In the first game of the series, West Central scored the first nine runs of the game. They got three right away in the bottom of the first, one in the second, and another in the third for a 5-0 lead. Four more runs were scored in the bottom of sixth. Milbank got two runs in the top of the seventh.
CJ DenBoer had three hits and two RBIs. Keaton Vessells added two hits. Zach Lorang had a single and an RBI. Hayes Cain finished with a hit. Nick Lorang, Jacob Mallinger, Alex Siemonsma, and Ashton Gebhart all had an RBI. Anthony Lanham pitched six innings and allowed five hits and four walks with 10 strikeouts. Siemonsma pitched one inning and allowed two earned runs on two hits and two walks with one strikeout.
West Central 15, Milbank 4
The offense kept rolling in the second game. West Central scored two runs right away in the top of the first inning. Milbank got one run in the bottom of the inning for a 2-1 score. West Central added four more in the top of the second for a 6-1 lead. Milbank kept it close after scoring three times in the bottom of the second. The score remained 6-4 until the top of the fourth. West Central delivered the big blow to Milbank with nine runs in the inning.
Vessells had four hits, one a double, and two RBIs. DenBoer added two hits and an RBI. Cain and Gebhart both had a single and two RBIs each. Mallinger also had a single. Z. Lorang and N. Lorang both had two RBIs each. Jericho Klein threw four innings and allowed four earned runs on three hits and a walk with five strikeouts. JT Steckley threw one inning walking one and striking out one.
