After not performing the way it had wanted over spring break, Warren East bounced back on Monday night.
The Raiders — who lost three of their four games last week in Florida — opened District 14 play with a convincing 7-0 shutout win over South Warren in the first of a three-game series at Raider Ballpark.
“We felt pretty good going down to Florida, and when we got down there, it was really a wake-up call,” Warren East pitcher Ryan Hawks said. “There’s people down there grinding every single day. It really motivated us to come out here and put on a good show.”
Warren East (5-3 overall, 1-0 District 14) had seven different players finish with hits, while the Louisville commit Hawks led the way with a 2-for-3 showing to go along 11 strikeouts and just two allowed hits on the mound. Just behind Hawks, Preston Dyer tallied two RBI and scored two runs and Dakota Basham and Nolan Ford each added two hits.
The Raiders took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning and doubled it two frames later. East then broke loose for four runs on five hits in the fifth — powered by Dyer’s two-run double — and was in control from there.
“We came back from Florida last week and I think we had too much fun and we didn’t focus,” Warren East coach Wes Sanford said. “I’m hoping tomorrow whenever we come back out we’re not digging ourselves and are ready to come out and play hard. We learned last week that if we don’t show up, we’re gonna get beat up pretty good.”
East and South Warren (3-5, 0-1) will meet for Game 2 of the series at 5 p.m. Tuesday as part of a doubleheader at Warren Central High School. Greenwood and Warren Central are scheduled to get underway at 7:30.
After a scoreless opening inning, Warren East recorded the game’s first run courtesy of a South Warren error in the second. With Colson Elkins on second base, Morgan Phelps connected on a pitch and was able to get to where Elkins was due to a throwing error by Spartans’ shortstop Drew Gregory.
“It was a close game early, but we can’t walk people and we can’t make errors,” South Warren coach Chris Gage said. “That’s our formula. It’s pretty simple. The first guy that scored there was on a walk. Then we compounded it later on with some errors. In a game like that, you want to keep it close because (Hawks) is a good pitcher, but you can’t shoot yourself in the foot.”
The Raiders doubled their lead to 2-0 two innings later on Sheldon Martin’s two-out single that scored Dyer, who led off with a single of his own. Sanford had high praise for the duo — and the bottom half of his batting order — following the victory.
“The bottom of our order really got us going tonight,” Sanford said. “The top and the middle kind of went off the bottom. I think they scored our first two runs. Preston Dyer had a heckuva night. He didn’t get to go to Florida with us last week, so it was good that he got in here first day from a whole week off from baseball and got us going.”
Warren East took total control in the bottom half of the fifth.
As Ty Stringfield began the frame by reaching on an error, Hawks and Basham followed with singles to load the bases. Taking advantage of the situation, Elkins singled to score Stringfield before Dyer’s big double sent a pair home and made it 5-0. Another hit — this one a two-out single from Ford — gave the Raiders a comfortable 6-0 advantage entering the sixth.
“Shout out to them. Seven runs is huge,” Hawks said of the Raiders’ offensive performance. “Anytime you give me seven runs, we should come out with a win.”
The seventh run that Hawks mentioned came in the sixth, as Dyer reached on a dropped third strike that allowed Stringfield to score and seal it and look ahead to Tuesday’s contest.
“Tomorrow’s really important,” said Sanford. “We’ll be facing another good arm from them. Offensively, they’re a lot better than they showed today. Ryan did a really good job of holding them down. They’re a really good offensive team and always have been.”
–Senior writer Tyler Mansfield can be reached at mansfield.sportingtimes@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @TMansfieldST.–
