Morning Star Staff
The Okanagan U15 Bantam AAA Athletics baseball team, featuring six former Vernon players, split a four-game series with the North Shore Twins last weekend at Marshall Field.
Falcon Thomas, Carter Morris, Eric Foufoulas, Jack Janzen, Braydon Beacom and Chase Batchelor helped the Athletics split the series winning Games 1 and 4, starting strong with an opening 13-7 win and closing with a final 10-0 victory.
Beacom started the first game on the mound and left after three innings with an 8 -1 lead and three punchouts. Foufoulas and Thomas lived on the bases with each drawing four walks and scoring three runs.
Batchelor was 1-for-3 at the dish, adding a sac fly and a walk with 2 RBI and scoring twice. Third baseman Morris offered stellar defence, banged out two hits and crossed home once. Janzen made several nice catches in right field and contributed an RBI.
After losing the middle two games when their bats went cold, the Athletics played a phenomenal Game 4.
Morris dialed up an epic performance, throwing his first career complete-game no-hitter of the 21 outs in the seven-inning game, Morris rung up 13 Twins on strikeouts and didn’t allow a single ball to be hit to the outfield. Batchelor, at shortstop, and Beacom, at second base, recorded seven outs with three spectacular plays that robbed North Shore of hits.
Foufoulas, hitting second in the order, was 2-for-3 with a pair of singles, a walk, stolen base and run scored. Morris was 3-for-3 with two RBI and one run. Batchelor scored four times after pair of singles, two walks and two stolen bases. Morris and Foufoulas took home well deserved MVP honors for the Athletics.
The Athletics are 31-19 overall and sit in second place in the Premier Baseball League at 21-11. They close out their regular season this weekend with two games each against Coquitlam & North Shore on the road.
The A’s will then play in the Bantam AAA Provincials, July 28-July 31, in Kamloops with a chance to play their way into either the Western or national championships in August.
The Vernon Canadians U9 (Tadpole) team took the field for the first time and lost 14-2 to the Penticton Thunder Saturday at Lakeview Park.
Charlie McGinty and Vincent Sanfilippo both finished 2-for-2 for Vernon.
Tyson Hilditch, Cash Lewendon, Travis Nelson, and Heyden Little combined for nine hits and nine RBI for the Thunder.
Penticton jumped out to an ealy 2-0 in the top of the first. Vernon quickly levelled the score on RBI-singles by Sanfilippo and Chayton Hauberg.
Penticton rung up two more runs in the second inning and took control. The C’s got a solid 1-2-3 inning of work on the mound from Vernon’s Drew Chirstensen in the third.
The Canadians bowed 7-5 to the Kelowna Sun Devils in Game 2 Saturday afternoon.
The Canadians outhit the Sun Devils 14-10 with Christensen, Diego Morales, Jordie Brown and Sanfilippo driving in runs.
Everett Brown started on the mound with solid first inning, holding Kelowna to one hit and no runs.
Kelowna put up another four runs in the third inning making it 6-2 and Kelowna added one last run in the top of the fifth.
Vernon plays another doubleheader with Penticton and Kelowna this weekend at Lombardy Field in Kelowna.