State Bound: Troy Ozone team advances to state tournament after sweep of Geneva
Published 3:00 am Saturday, June 25, 2016
After sweeping their way through the West District 9 tournament the Troy Ozone team had their sites on doing the same in the district championship series on Friday night.
Troy defeated Geneva 13-3 in game one and followed it up with a dominating 18-2 win over Geneva in game two.
Geneva kept it close during most of the ball game, but a seven run fifth inning ended the game.
“We saw better pitching and hitting tonight from Geneva,” said Ozone head coach David Nelson. “The starter in game one kept them in the game for a while.”
Troy finished with 15 hits in the game led by Press Jefcoat who went 3-3 at the plate. Darryl Lee led the way in RBIs with three.
Press Jefcoat took to the mound for Troy in game one. He left the game after throwing 2.1 innings while allowing three total runs, two of which were earned on four hits and striking out three. Adrian Cardwell came in and pitched and inning and two thirds of shutout baseball leaving the final inning to Drew Nelson who let up a walk but had two strikeouts.
Geneva scored the game’s first run when they scored on an error in the first inning.
“Press did a good job getting out of a first inning jam caused by a couple of errors from our infield,” Nelson said. “They brought seven men to the plate in the first inning, but only scored one run.”
Troy came out in the bottom of the first inning and put up five runs to take the lead.
Geneva returned the favor and committed an error that scored Nelson to even the score in the first. The next four runs came courtesy of the Geneva’s pitcher as Bailey Sparrow and Daryl Lee came in to score on a wild pitch and a passed ball. Troy closed out the offense when Cardwell singled in Jefcoat and Skylar Kidd scored on a wild pitch.
After Jefcoat held Geneva scoreless in the second inning, Troy added their sixth run of the game in the bottom of the second when Sparrow singled to centerfield scoring Noah Prestwood.
Jefcoat and Troy took the field for the third inning and Geneva attempted to get back in the game. Jefcoat was only able to get an out in the third before being pulled for Cardwell. Geneva was able to shrink Troy’s lead to 6-2 heading into the fourth.
Both teams went scoreless in the fourth inning.
The big hit of the inning came off the bat of Lee who hit a three-run home run scoring Nelson and Sparrow to increase their lead to 9-3. Troy also had two more runs in Kidd and Jefcoat to score on a wild pitch. Prestwood also came around to score when Nelson reached safely on an error.
It didn’t take long for Troy to take control in game two. They were able to score eight runs in the first inning and followed that up by a 10-run second.
After hitting a total of 25 homeruns during the district tournament they followed it up with one homerun in game one and had two in game two by Jefcoat and Landon Thrash.
Troy finished with a total of six hits led by Jefcoat and Braisted who each had two hits.
Thrash got the start for Troy and pitched the game’s first two innings. He allowed two runs on one hit. Lee pitched the final inning, he allowed one hit and struck out one batter.
Troy will now head to the state tournament in Enterprise.