Hood River Valley saw a familiar foe and a couple of new ones this past week in a spring break baseball tournament at Nelson High in Clackamas, where the Eagles continued to prepare for their final season in the Intermountain Conference.
HRV sits at 3-2 two thirds through its nonleague schedule. The Eagles have three more outings before they begin their three-game IMC series schedule against five league opponents.
“Overall, I feel pretty good about going 3-1 in the tournament,” Coach Max Reitz said. “We are playing better defense than I expected this early in the season and our pitching has been very good. Offensively I feel we have faced some very good pitching and aren’t quite clicking on all cylinders. When we get deeper into teams’ pitching depth, we are generally hitting them hard, but we need to find a way to score more runs off opposing teams’ top pitchers.”
This week should help, as the Eagles have two competitive games scheduled. Hood River continues its nonleague slate with a 4 p.m. home game Tuesday against La Salle. The Eagles then play a 5 p.m. contest Friday at Oregon City.
“We have a great week of baseball ahead with La Salle visiting Traner Field on Tuesday,” Reitz said. “They are a good 5A program and off to a solid start. We also will be in their league next year so it’s a good chance to get a first look at each other. Friday, we have a really tough game on the road at 6A Oregon City.”
Reitz said the Eagles will be without their best offensive player, Mason Spellecy, who suffered a hamstring injury this past week. “We will need other guys to step up until Mason gets back,” Reitz said. “We should know more about how long he is out (Monday). I’ll be surprised to see him on the field this week, however.”
The Eagles’ spring break tourney matchups included two games against former 5A foe Sandy High, which HRV beat 7-0 on March 24. A day later, the Eagles toppled host Nelson, 9-5, but lost their second game that day, 1-0, in a rematch against Sandy. Hood River won its final tourney game, 6-0, over Portland’s McDaniel on March 25.
The two Sandy games were similar to past matchups between the two schools. Gorge baseball followers might remember a few of the past HRV-Sandy games, including the 2014 5A state championship won by the Pioneers, 8-3. HRV made it back to the final a year later and won the 5A title, 2-0, over Liberty High. Sandy also beat HRV, 4-2, in the first round of the 2018 playoffs and the Pioneers have now won five of the past eight meetings between the two schools.
HRV won the first showdown between the two teams last week, 7-0. “This was just a great high school baseball game,” Reitz said. “We got a stellar pitching performance from Jake Von Lubken, who went seven complete innings with five strikeouts and no walks.”
The contest was 0-0 until the sixth inning, when HRV pushed across a run after a leadoff single from Joe Reitz (2-for-4 with two runs, two RBI and two stolen bases). Reitz stole second, advanced to third on a passed ball and scored on a Spellecy sacrifice fly. Spellecy later knocked in another run with a double. HRV clinched the win with six runs in the seventh inning, two plated by a Reitz double.
“It was a very well-played game, with only three walks and no errors committed - doesn’t get much better than that,” Coach Reitz said. “And Jake was fantastic on the mound; great tempo, on the attack all game long, competed hard.”
HRV continued the momentum in its next game against the host school, Nelson. The Eagles took a 1-0 lead in the first inning, but Nelson answered with two tallies in the bottom of the frame. HRV took control with five runs in the second inning and three more in the third.
“Given the tournament format and four games in three days, we had to be more creative with our pitching and got really good work out of the pen from sophomore Jordan Webber in his first varsity game, as well as 4 and 2/3 innings of solid pitching from senior Cole Duckwall,” Reitz said.
Spellecy had a 2-for-3 day with four RBI. Leadoff hitter Trenton Hughes scored three runs, and Joe Reitz and Jake Von Lubken also drove in two runs apiece.
The rematch against Sandy later that day proved more exciting that the day before. Each team started their aces on the mound: Spellecy for HRV and Casey Kruckman for Sandy. Coach Reitz said Spellecy battled some with his command, “but really fought his way out of some tight jams. He’s just a great competitor.”
Sandy scored the only run of the game in the top of the third when HRV failed to get an out after picking a runner off of first base. “As is the case with these 1-0 games against good teams, the little things that you don’t do can come back to haunt you and while we played a very good game, there were several plays we left out on the field that cost us,” Reitz said.
HRV stranded two runners in the bottom of the sixth inning and loaded the bases in the bottom of the seventh but couldn’t score any runs.
“It was a painful game to lose because of our missed opportunities but one we will definitely build off of and use to motivate us to keep getting better,” Reitz said. “Sandy is clearly a very good 6A team and we competed very well. This was another clean game with neither team committing an error.”
Hughes led the HRV offense with two hits.
HRV controlled its final tourney game against a young McDaniel team from the outset. Starter Hunter Hough threw four of the game’s five innings, allowing no runs, three hits, no walks, while striking out six. Joe Reitz led the offense with two hits, two runs and four RBI. Hough went 2-for-3 with an RBI, and Hughes scored twice and stole four bases.
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