By Spencer Spilman
The Hays Rebels were in a battle against the Akins Eagles Tuesday as the game came down to the final at bats.
But the Rebels came up short after the Eagles strung together a four-run seventh inning to take the victory, 9-5.
David Riojas was on the mound for the Rebels and fell into an early hole. Akins put up two runs on the scoreboard in the first inning after a few mishaps from the Hays defense.
Trailing 3-0, Hays responded with a run of its own. Hays’ catcher Cole Irby hit an RBI single to bring in Tyler Wilson to bring the deficit back to two runs.
Riojas struggled early and so did his defense behind him.
“We didn’t play very well defensively, at all,” Hays head coach David Null said.
Hays defense picked up the pace in the middle of the game.
Wilson, who smothered a ball in the third inning and fired a perfect throw to Irby to keep a run from scoring, aided the defensive resurgence.
Athen Schultz followed by throwing out a runner tagging on a sacrifice fly ball at home in the fifth inning.
Akins scratched across a run to increase the lead to 5-1.
The Hays bats came alive against Eagles’ pitcher Adam Ivey in the bottom of the fifth.
Irby started off the inning with a leadoff single. Then, with the bases loaded, Schultz hit a two-RBI single to narrow the deficit. Mike Gonzales came to the plate next and hit and RBI single of his own to make it 5-4.
The Akins second baseman fumbled the ball trying to turn a double-play two plays in a row and allowed another Rebel runner to cross the plate to tie the game at five.
“We battled back and put ourselves in a position to win, but we just didn’t come through on it,” said Null.
After battling back from four runs down, Riojas went to the seventh inning tallying over 100 pitches. On the second pitch of the inning, Austin McNicholas bombed a homerun over the left field fence, kick starting a four run Akins rally.
Riojas was taken out after that pitch and the Rebels were unable to fight back from four runs down to tie the game in their final at-bat.
