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The West Central 17U Gold baseball team faced the Claremont Honkers in a best-of-three series to qualify for the 2025 South Dakota VFW State Tournament.\u00a0 The first game was on Monday, July 14th and the second game was on Wednesday, July 16th.\u00a0 Claremont won both games to punch their ticket to the state tournament.<\/p>\n
West Central took the lead right away in the bottom of the first in the opening game of the series.\u00a0 Taylan Sichmeller scored on an error, and Noah Erickson had an RBI single to put West Central ahead 2-0.\u00a0 Claremont would rally in the top of the fourth and score three times to go in front 3-2.\u00a0 They added another run in the top of the fourth.\u00a0 Cooper Ball had an RBI single for West Central in the bottom of the fifth to make the score 4-3.\u00a0 West Central had the bases loaded with only one out in the bottom of the seventh, but a force out at home and a ground ball to first ended the game.<\/p>\n
Erickson finished with two hits, one a double, and an RBI.\u00a0 Ball had a single with an RBI.\u00a0 Eli Koehn added a double.\u00a0 Andrew Holtzman, Braylon Robbins, Kane Grace, and Maddax Jackson all had one hit each.\u00a0 Grace pitched 4 1\/3 innings and allowed four runs, all unearned, on four hits and three walks with eight strikeouts.\u00a0 Jackson pitched 2 2\/3 innings and struck out two batters.<\/p>\n
Another mid-inning rally helped the Honkers win the second game against West Central to advance to the state tournament.\u00a0 Claremont scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the first for an early 1-0 lead.\u00a0 Robbins tied the game with an RBI single in the top of the fourth.\u00a0 Two batters later Erickson had an RBI double to left field to put West Central in front 2-1.\u00a0 The Honkers, however, regained the lead, 3-2, with a two-out, two-run double in the bottom of the fourth.\u00a0 West Central again had the tying run on third base and the go-ahead run on first base in the top of the seventh with one out, but a pop out to the catcher and ground out to third stopped the rally.<\/p>\n
Erickson had a double and an RBI.\u00a0 Robbins ended with a single and an RBI.\u00a0 Holtzman, Jacob Mallinger, Jett Whiting, and Jackson all had one hit each.\u00a0 Max Lewin pitched all six innings and allowed three earned runs on three hits and four walks with eight strikeouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The West Central 17U Gold baseball team faced the Claremont Honkers in a best-of-three series to qualify for the 2025 South Dakota VFW State Tournament.\u00a0 The first game was on Monday, July 14th and the second game was on Wednesday, July 16th.\u00a0 Claremont won both games to punch their ticket to the state tournament. July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[41,156],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-16u-baseball","tag-featured","tag-west-central-16u-baseball"],"yoast_head":"\n