Eagle baseball moves past Monrovia

SPEEDWAY--The South Putnam Eagles jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning and never looked back Thursday night, winning 11-8. They were the guests in their first sectional game of the year at Speedway and played the Monrovia Bulldogs.

The first six batters all scored for the Eagles and all scored with no outs on the scoreboard. Senior Wyatt Neese capped the scoring off with a triple that drove in junior Jake Schroer. Neese scored on a Monrovia error.

"I think we've been playing some of our best baseball here lately," Eagles' coach Zack Love said. "We've got a significant amount of wins and it builds momentum going into the tournament and I think that is what you saw in the first inning."

The hitting led to good pitching from sophomore Brandon Gierke for the Eagles. He went the first three innings only allowing four base runners. Two were because of errors.

"I think we built off the momentum there early on," Love said.

South Putnam put 11 runs on the board before the Bulldogs could score. When the Bulldogs did score it was a little too late.

The Eagles started having problems taking care of the ball in the fourth inning and gave up three runs. Three errors by senior catcher Tyler Long amounted to a big inning loss.

"I don't want to use the ball being wet as an excuse," Love said, "We were taking some chances defensively and I think that happens with the lead. We just got to remember to play like we know and ourselves."

The runs were done for South Putnam who started struggling to get men on base. They went from having 14 men on base in the first four innings to only one in the last three.

The pitching also settled down. Gierke allowed 13 base runners in the final three innings.

The most stressful inning came in the final inning with two outs. The Eagles gave up four runs with three errors. To the Eagles' luck. a Bulldogs' base runner over ran second on an error and was tagged out to finalize the score, 11-8.

Speedway Sectional

WP: Gierke (SP)