GRANTS, N.M. Head coach Mike Furbee of the Grants High School Baseball Team had struggled earlier in the season finding the right line up. Well this past week, on April 4th to be exact, the Pirates found their line up and in a seesaw battle came out on top by 1 run with a tough district rival–the St. Pius Sartans. The score was 7-6.
“We went in with a mindset of it being just another game,” said GHS head baseball coach Furbee. “We just needed to play well defensively and stay patient at the plate.” Furbee added, “We did both committing only 1 error and drawing 7 walks.”
Evan Taylor pitched 6 innings for the Pirates allowing for 9 hits, 6 runs, 4 earned runs 3 walks and 6 strikeouts. Estevan Barela, who recently hit 200 strikeouts, closed out the game for the Pirates allowing 1 hit and 1 strikeout.
Joziah Ortega and Daniel Garcia had 2 RBI’s apiece while Estevan Barela had 1 RBI.
Barela, Derek Rhoades and Zeth Villasana had 2 hits apiece. Ortega, Garcia and Evan Taylor had 1 hit apiece.
Next up for the Pirate will be Highland (3-10, 01) on the road on April 7th.
The Pirates advance to 11-8, 2-0 and are currently 2nd in district just behind Belen (9-7,2-0).
In softball news, the GHS softball team had a bear of a game against St. Pius (14-5, 20) in a district match-up on April 2nd. The lost that game 18-0. “St. Pius is always a strong, well rounded team,” said GHS head coach Victor Aldaz. “They capitalized on our mistakes—and defensively we didn’t execute the way we needed to.”
Aldaz added that as the game progressed St. Pius, “hit the ball well and put us in tough spots all through the game.”
Prior the St. Pius game, the Pirates played Valencia (5-13, 1-0) and lost that game by 3 runs, 10-7.
“Valencia was a tough one for us,” said Aldaz. “Meliah Chavez came u big with a 3-run homerun (4th inning)–to give us the lead–we just couldn’t hold on to it.”
In that game the Pirates led 7-3 after 6 innings. Then the 7th inning hit and at the top of that inning Valencia scored 5 runs and the win.
Currently the Lady Pirates are 10-7, 0-2 going into their next game with Highland (1-12, 0-1) on April 7th at home.
“We had success with Highland in the past—we expect to come out strong,” said Aldaz.
Currently the Lady Pirate are 5th in district 54A with St. Pius on top of that district.
On April 9th the Lady Pirate will travel to Belen for another district game.