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By: Chris Evans and Marc Seifert
Both the high school and junior high baseball teams represented themselves nicely by reaching the finals of their respected tournaments. The high school would fall short in their tournament finals while the junior high Jays came away with a championship.
The varsity traveled to Choctaw for a four day tourney, but despite game two ending around midnight, the Jays fell short in the finals to Sand Springs Saturday evening.
Guthrie reached the finals with a 6-3 win over Norman as well a win over, the host team, Choctaw in come from behind fashion in the sixth and seventh innings to win 7-4. The Jays dropped a game to the to the OKC Bronchos, but would get some help from Choctaw as they took down the Bronchos to land the Jays in the finals.
The Class 6A Sandites of Sand Springs took home the championship with a 7-5 win over the Bluejays.
All was not lost Saturday evening as the Guthrie Junior High Jays won their own tournament held at Squires Field. The junior Jays were dominant at times, but needed a rally to win the tournament Saturday night.
In the finals against the eighth grade Enid Plainsmen, Guthrie jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the top of the first inning with run batted in singles from Landry Chappell, John Clark, and Kasey Gates. Gates finished the game by going 4-4.
Enid, however, would respond in their first inning with four runs by taking advantage of two Jays errors, and then added two more runs in the second inning to take a 6-5 advantage.
Guthrie would not trail long when they pushed three runs across the plate in the third inning to take an 8-6 lead, but Enid had their own response in the next two innings with a run in the fourth and two in the fifth to take back a 9-8 lead with the Jays coming to their final at bat.
Luke Davis sparked Guthrie with a lead-off double down the line and later stole third base. Hayden Seifert would hit a 1-out sacrifice fly to plate Davis to tie the game at 9-all.
With two outs, the visiting Jays would get a single from Clark, who like Davis would stoled a base to get into scoring position, and then did score the game winning, championship run off of a Scott Pickle single.
Chappell, who came into relief for Bryan Dutton in the sixth inning, picked up the win despite giving up a hit in the seventh.
Guthrie reached the finals by getting a first round win over the Choctaw Yellow Jackets 6-1 thanks in part to Chappell's 3-run RBI, in the fifth inning, that plated JT McFadden, Pickle, and Evan Plagg to break a 1-1 tie, and in Guthrie's second round game, the Jays scored 27-runs on a cool, crisp Friday night to take down the seventh grade team from Enid, 27-1.
In the three wins, Guthrie scored 42 times and allow just 11 runs for coaches Casey Porter, Brian Jackson, and Jonathan Atchley. The Jays (10-1) will be back in action on Monday when they host Enid before traveling to Edmond Cheyenne, Choctaw, and Western Heights.
Guthrie Sports Page would like to thank Marc Seifert for his contribution to this story.
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