By Jacob Govero (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
When Aurora’s pitching is on, they are very tough to beat.
Unfortunately for Reeds Spring, Aurora’s Wyatt Sparks was at the top of his game for Monday’s Class 4 – District 11 semifinal. Sparks struck out 16 Reeds Spring batters as the Houn Dawgs shut out the Wolves 4-0 to advance to the district title game.
Knowing that Reeds Spring would be keying on his fastball, Sparks said he had to change things up.
“They were expecting fastballs so we would start out with the curveball, my arm felt really good. I’ve been preparing all week this,” Sparks said.
Striking out the side in the first, third, and sixth inning, the junior righty was commanding the strike zone from the start of the game.
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“Wyatt’s been good all year, we expect him to hammer the zone and limit the number of walks he has. 16 strikeouts to one walk, those are the type of pitching performances we are going to need to advance in this tournament,” Said Houn Dawgs’ Head Coach James Hoffman of his pitcher’s afternoon.
Aurora would grab the lead in the bottom of the first. After Sparks led off the game with a walk, he would come all the way around to score off an errant throw to first by Reeds Spring on a sacrifice bunt from Kaleb Baker making it 1-0. A sacrifice fly by shortstop Gage Singer scored Baker from third as the Hown Dogs led 2-0 after one inning.
“We talked all week about wanting to keep teams honest against us. We are a team that likes to go up there and swing it, so we lay down a few bunts tonight to shorten the field, but the bottom line is that we need to score some runs so that’s what we did,” Hoffman said.
Gronvold would have a fine day at the mound as well for Reeds Spring. The sophomore lefty had only about 10 innings of experience on the season. He would pitch 5 2/3 solid innings allowing only one earned run for the day.
“Blake for a sophomore kid to go up there and do what he did, justifies that he’s a gamer and that he’s going to be a good one for us,” said Wolves’ Head Coach Chris Funk.
“I’m proud of the way we competed against a team that is very talented. But give credit to Coach Hoffman and to their performance,” he added.
The Houn Dawgs would pick up two more runs in their half of the sixth inning. After a lead-off walk to Baker, right fielder Mathew Miller laid down another sacrifice bunt the advanced Baker to third base. A sacrifice fly by Singer would plate Baker making the score 3-0.
Preston Naylor singled to left field and then a double by Ryan Cline scored Naylor. That would make it a 4-0 game and provide all the run support Aurora would need.
Sparks fanned the last two batters he faced as Aurora advanced to the championship game of District 11.
With the victory the Houn Dawgs improved to 22-3 for the season and will face Rogersville at 5 p.m. on Tuesday in Hollister.
Reeds Spring finished the season at 11-13 and will look to build off some solid victories and the return of an experienced team next year.
