The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

PRESCOTT - The Waits­burg Prescott hardballers earned a split with Tri-Cities Prep here Saturday on the springiest day of the spring sports season. The 70-degree sunlight didn't help WP in its first game as the Tigers tumbled to a disappointing 6-2 loss. WP rebounded in the afternoon affair, taking the high-scoring second half of the twinbill, 14-9.

Prep starter Isaac Nel­son held the WP offense in check for most of game one. Nelson fanned five through the first three innings while allowing just one hit. Nelson finished with eight Ks and seven fly outs in his 2-hit gem.

WP didn't get on the board until the fourth when Dalton Estes parlayed a walk and three stolen bases, in­cluding a steal of home, into the Tigers first run. The hard­est steal of the three-Estes' swipe of third after a pick-off move left him in a pickle, ended safely at the hot corner bag with two-thirds of the Jaguar side standing around him.

Estes stole one more bag in the sixth after reaching on a base-on-balls. That steal put him in scoring position, which WP third baseman Ri­ley Stevens took advantage of, doubling to right center.

Those two runs weren't enough for WP's porous game-one defense, however. On the mound, Estes strug­gled to find the strike zone, issuing five walks in the first two innings. Meanwhile, the Tiger defense committed four errors in the same span, leading to the Jaguars first two runs.

The Jags didn't open up the game until the fourth. Estes found his groove set­ting down six straight Prep batters stretching back to the second inning. Just when it appeared he would net his seventh and eighth in a row, his outfield let him down on consecutive flies. Prep catcher Josh Guajardo made WP pay for those two mis­takes with a 2-RBI double. Guajardo scored one batter later when Stevens failed to make a play on Nelson's hard grounder. The Jags led 5-0 at that point and added one more run in the fifth to notch the 6-2 win.

The Jags jumped on WP starting pitcher Chance Le­roue in the first inning of game two. Prep's first four batters reached safely-on three base hits and a walk- and each scored. After an in­ning and a half, Prep led 5-1.

WP's offense came alive in the bottom of the second. First baseman Nick Pearson led off with a single. Leroue followed with a double. Sec­ond baseman Kyle Dozier reached safely on an E-6 al­lowing Pearson to score. Leroue scored on Michael Grant's sacrifice to the right side of the infield and two batters later, Dozier scored when left fielder Nolen Allen hit a single. Estes, at short­stop for game two, batted Allen in on a triple. And WP took its first lead of the day, 6-5, when Estes scored by stealing home.

The Jags briefly retook the lead in the top of the fourth 7-6, but the Tigers snatched it back in the bot­tom of the frame. Leroue's RBI double and Grant's RBI single put WP on top for good, 8-7.

The Tigers tacked on two more runs in the fifth, and four big ones in the sixth to break it open, 14-7. WP Reliever Talen Larsen set down the side in order in the fifth and sixth before giving up the Jags last two runs in the seventh to close out the 3-inning save.

"We just couldn't get anything going offensively (in game one)," said WP as­sistant coach Jake Vibbert. "We weren't putting the ball in play and defensively we were giving them some extra outs."

"(Tri-Cities Prep) wasn't hitting the ball real hard (in game two). They were just getting freebies," Vibbert said. "The last five innings we took care of the ball a little better, didn't walk as many people, and defen­sively we really started to button it up. Offensively we started slow, but then we got together and poured on 14 runs. Chance Leroue had three big hits-two doubles and a long single. That was huge for us."

The game one defeat marked just the second loss for WP this season. The Ti­gers stand 8-2, 3-1 in league. Tri-Cities Prep improves to 1-3 in league.

Game 1