Prep Baseball Roundup

"We hit the ball pretty well," Bruins Coach Larry McCutcheon said. "In the first inning of the first game, we scored five runs on five hits, and none of them were cheap shots. Our six-run third inning in the second game was similar."

Columbia's five-run first in an abbreviated game one featured run-scoring hits by Jared McDonald, Danny Giron, Jason Collins and Dane Bargabus, and an RBI fielder's choice off the bat of Andy Pate.

The big inning staked McDonald to a four-run lead (he yielded an RBI single to Kelly Powell in the top of the first) and the senior right-hander made it stand up through four shutout innings, in front of a defense that played error-free baseball.

McDonald finished his stingy five-inning performance with a stat line of three hits, three walks, five strikeouts and four runners left on base.

Offensive standouts for CHS included McDonald (2 for 3, double, 3 RBIs), Giron (2 for 3, double, 3 RBIs), Bargabus (2 for 3, RBI) and Pate (2 RBIs).

The Bruins, the visiting team in game two, broke the contest open with a six-run third inning that snapped a 1-1 tie.

Columbia scored all six runs off losing pitcher Casey West before two were out, on four hits and four Stevenson errors. The hits included a two-run single by Bargabus and a run-scoring base knock by Pate.

The win went to Champion, who pitched five innings of two-run, six-hit ball and left with a 9-2 lead.

Lyle 11-5, at Klickitat 4-1:

Mike Murphy homered in both games and drove in seven runs total to help the Cougars sweep the April 1 Greater Columbia B League double-header from the Vandals.

In game one, Klickitat took the early lead on a three-run homer by Kris Wood in the bottom of the first off Cord Cothren.

But Cothren was virtually unhittable after that. He finished his complete-game four-hitter by allowing just one unearned run over the last six innings.

"After Wood hit that three-run shot in the first, Cord got mad and dominated the rest of the game, ending up with 16 strikeouts," Cougars Coach Scott Myers said.

Lyle pounded Klickitat pitching for 13 hits, including two home runs by Mike Eiesland and single shots by Murphy and Andrew Hernandez. Chris Wolff, Joe Campbell and Dillon Huffman each hit a double.

Murphy finished with four runs batted in, and Eiesland and Hernandez each accounted for two RBIs.

In game two, the Cougars led all the way and improved to 7-3 overall.

They scored two runs in the first inning with Cothren's RBI single and Eiesland's bases loaded walk off the Vandals' Jeromie Mason and got a three-run homer to straight-away center field from Murphy in the seventh to help make Eiesland a winner.

"Mike and Jeromie both pitched well," Myers noted. "Jeromie had just two bad innings, but they were enough for us to get the win, because Mike stayed in control the whole game."

Eiesland allowed four hits, struck out eight, walked two and hit two batters in going the distance, but gave up just the earned run on Mason's RBI single in the fifth.