Baseball gets Reardan Monday

With a 10-4 win over Davenport in the first round of district baseball Tuesday, the LRS Broncos have advanced to a 10 a.m. game with the Reardan Indians on Monday, May 13, in Medical Lake.

The Broncos and the Indians have been locked in a season long battle that found them tied for third place in the Northeast 2B League at the conclusion of the regular season. The two teams met last Saturday for a tiebreaker game the Broncos eventually lost, 7-6.

“We left too many guys on base,’ head coach Jason Aldrich said of the outing. “We’re both pretty evenly matched teams.”

The match up proved to be a good one as the teams battled throughout the game.

The Broncos drew first blood with a run in the opening inning. Reardan answered with two in the second and two more in the third.

The Broncos tied the contest, 4-4, in the fourth when they posted three runs. Reardan took the lead in the sixth with three runs and the Broncos squeezed out to more runs in the seventh, coming up just short of making a comeback.

“It was quite a deal actually. It was a good game,” Aldrich said. “We couldn’t capitalize enough.”

Tyler Frederick went four innings for the Broncos with three strikeouts, four walks and giving up six hits and four earned runs.

Dylan Hartz finished the game, taking over in the fifth. He recorded three strikeouts and two walks, allowing four hits.

“In the sixth they did a good job of small ball and had to squeeze a guy in,” Aldrich said of Reardan. “They ended up with a two-run triple that broke our back a little bit.”

In the seventh, Hartz got a double for the Broncos. Two outs later the Broncos get a spark with a walk and then a groundball the Reardan second baseman couldn’t handle, which allowed Hartz to score. With runners on first and second, Jacob Saetre cracked a single to give the Broncos another run.

An aggressive effort by the Broncos ended when a runner was tagged out at home to end the game.

Hartz finished the game going 3-for-4 at the plate with a double. Frederick was 1-for-3 with an RBI. Cort Ruzicka was 1-for-4 with a double and an RBI. Saetre finished the day 2-for-4 with a triple and two RBI. Bridger Smith was 1-for-3 with an RBI and Connor O’Neill was 1-for-4 with a double.

Tuesday Ruzicka got the win for the Broncos, pitching into the fifth. Frederick and Smith closed out the pitching.

Hartz had two doubles in the game and Matt Leffel cranked a triple.

Davenport took the lead in the first inning with a 3-1 effort. The Broncos answered with three in the third inning and then two in the fourth. They sealed the win with a four run effort in the fifth.

If the Broncos win the 10 a.m. game on May 13, they will play again that day at 4 p.m.

The district championship game between Colfax and Northwest Christian is planned at 1 p.m.