Last Saturday, March 24, the San Saba JV baseball team competed in a four team, round robin tournament in Blanco. Our first game was against Harper JV. Kolton Ellis and Kelan Verette both had a good game batting. Both of these players went 2 for 2 with 2 runs scored, Verette also knocked one in. Both Ellis and Verette had doubles as well as J.T. Mathis and T.J. Hibler. Cosme Diaz had a two run triple in the bottom of the first to help push our lead to 4-1 at that point. Our other scoring happened in the third. Nine runs in all proved to be enough behind the pitching arm of Emiliano Zapata, who allowed six earned runs out of seven total in five innings of work and allowing nine hits, only one walk and struck out four. San Saba held on for the victory by a score of 7 – 9.In our second game of the day, we faced Navarro JV, who we also played at this tournament last year. By the second inning we were behind 5 – 0 due to some misplayed balls defensively, allowing walks by our pitching, and not hitting the ball offensively. Finally some bats started coming alive. Ellis went 4 for 4 in this game, keeping him perfect on the day. Payton Johnson led our team in walks with two for this game. Mathis and Verette combined for five of the eight runs we would get this game. Most of this was too little, too late as we were down 9-2 going into what proved to be the last inning. We scored six runs in the top of the sixth to close the gap 9-8. But the time limit caused our game to end there and it was the walks and errors that allowed Navarro JV to win this one. Some important lessons to be learned by a young team.Then we faced the host team, the Blanco Panthers. We started off the game quietly with only Verette getting a single in the first. Then Blanco proceeded to place Verette’s pitches all over the outfield. Four singles, two doubles, two hit batters all equaled six runs in the scorebook and a huge early lead. After a few runs had been made, we switched our pitching to Jordan Watson, but the damage had been done. Then in the top of the second, San Saba came storming right back. Hibler doubled, Diaz walked, Garrett Welch laid down a bunt and got on, Payton Johnson got on after a ball put in play to the right side, and Verette and Mathis singled with RBI’s. Six runs were scored in all and the game was knotted at six. However, Blanco slugged the way back to a huge lead by plating seven more runs in the second inning alone and added three more later, against the pitching effort of Garrett Welch, just for more insurance. What stopped the bleeding in the third inning was a triple play. With the bases loaded, Blanco hit a line drive to our first baseman, T.J. Hibler, who caught the ball for one out. He stepped on the bag to double off the runner at first for the second out. And he threw across to Kolton Ellis who stepped on his bag at third doubling off a runner who did not even realize the line drive had been caught to begin with.All in all we finished the day by winning one game and losing two. That brings our season record to 2-4 overall on the year. We remain 1-1 in district play and look forward to playing two more games this week. We will play Coleman’s JV on our field on Thursday, March 29, at 4:30. We will also play the very next day against Hico’s JV again on our field on Friday, March 30, also at 4:30. Again this is a young team and they are learning valuable baseball lessons everyday whether it is a game or a practice. The more they play, the better they will get. We look forward to seeing everyone out at Dillo Diamond this week and watching some baseball. Go Dillos!!!