Beech Tree News Network

The Bears picked up two wins in the final week of regular season, beating Muhlenberg County 4-1 on Tuesday night behind a strong pitching performance by Blake Graham.  This avenged an earlier 8 inning defeat at the hands of the Mustangs the previous Saturday.  The Bears leading pitcher and top hitter statistically, Graham continued his hot streak at the plate also with some help from Eddie Phelps, Trevor Parker and Brandon Jones.

On Thursday, they followed that up with another victory over Russellville, 3-2 in one of the best games of the season.  This game was a very intense game that the Bears trailed 2-1 going into the 6th inning.  Trevor Parker led off the inning being hit by the pitch and soon stole 2nd base.  Brandon Jones extended his hitting streak to 7 games by driving Trevor in to tie the game.  Jones then stole 2nd and with two outs scored on an error by Russellville’s second baseman to take a 3-2 lead.  The drama continued in the in the top of the 7th as Russellville had the tying run on 3rd with no outs.  Ward struck out the next batter for the 1st out.  Russellville then hit a grounder to Connor Reed, who promptly tossed it home to Lake Cameron for a nice tag for the 2nd out.  A grounder to Jones at third ended Russellville’s night and the Bears won back-to-back games for the first time all season as Gage Ward picked up the complete game victory. 

The Bears also dropped two very close games during the week against 4th region contenders Logan County, 4-2, and Glasgow, 7-4.

The Bears entered District play on Monday night playing arguably its best baseball of the season.  As the #4 seed the Bears faced a tough task in the Grayson County Cougars.  Grayson had already beaten the Bears 21-1 and 16-0 earlier in the season.  However, the Bears had a different idea for this game.  Blake Graham was the starting pitcher for the Bears as he faced off against Grayson County’s ace, Wyatt Skaggs.  Graham and Skaggs took a shutout to the bottom of the 5th inning until back-to-back Grayson County hits put a man on 1st and 3rd with only one out in the first real threat by either team to score of the game.  Graham then induced a grounder to shortstop Eddie Phelps who flipped to Gage Ward at 2nd base for an out but the throw to first was just a little late for the double play and Grayson took a 1-0 lead.  The Bears fought valiantly playing really sold defense behind the stellar pitching performance of Graham.  However, they could only muster 3 base runners and one base hit on the night and fell 1-0 to Grayson County.

 
The loss ended the Bears season with a disappointing 5-31 record.  However, the boys in blue fought hard the last couple of weeks and played some really great baseball.  Seniors Peyton Bratcher, Brandon Jones, Connor Reed and Hunter Wilson all contributed down the stretch and went out fighting in their final games.  

Photos by Tiffani Jones, Beech Tree News