Medical Lake's Gavin O'Brien made this attempt at a catch in last Saturday's 16-1 American Legion National Division playoff loss to University. Despite this effort the ball dropped for a hit.
The conclusion of the Medical Lake AA American Legion baseball season was relatively quick.
Losses on Saturday, July 8 at Al K. Jackson Field in Spokane, 16-1 to University and 13-10 to East Valley in a double-elimination National Division tournament brings an end to the season. Earlier last week, Medical Lake earned a wild 18-13 nonleague win over Shadle Park. No statistics were available for last week's games.
Medical Lake finished 1-10 in National Division play and faced regular-season champ, U-Hi, and its 13-1 record in the opener.
Grant Vercoe scored Medical Lake's lone run in the opener in the top of the third inning, but once again watched the Spokane Valley team put up big numbers with a nine-run bottom of the third, five of the runs coming with two outs.
"That team seems to do that to us every time," co-head coach Austin Sharp said.
It certainly wasn't for lack of effort for sophomore right fielder Gavin O'Brien who made two tries to track down balls that fell into no-man's land.
"He gave full effort, he went to slide, (and) twice - I felt so bad for him - (the ball fell)," Sharp said. "That was tough for him not getting rewarded making one of those catches."
Sam Gollehon was on the mound early versus University. "Those were good pitches he made and the guy just bloops them down there," Sharp said.
Medical Lake had a quick turnaround in the double-elimination tournament and faced East Valley where the bats responded - until the end.
A sequence of hits in the top of the sixth inning helped Medical Lake regain the lead. It was jump-started by Gollehon's double to center field followed by Cale Swanson's hard hit ball into the gap, also for a double and then Sam Griffey tripled to left-center
"That was the end of our hitting," Sharp said. "We just couldn't string together a couple of hits in the last inning," he added.
In the Shadle game, Weston Thomas got the pitching victory after going four innings in the shootout.
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@chneyfreepress.com.
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