In the season opener for the new West Prairie/Augusta Southeastern baseball co-op against IHSA Class 2A Orion, head coach Grant Bland had planned on treating the contest as, more or less, a spring training game for an opportunity to see how his young squad and several new players would perform.
Bland wasn’t too pleased with the first inning as Orion capitalized on a couple of Cyclones’ errors to jump out to 6-0 lead and the Chargers would go on to a 19-7 non-conference victory Saturday in Colchester.
Despite the start and the outcome, Bland was actually happy with a lot of what he saw with his team that started four freshmen.
“The best part was that we almost emptied our bench today. We got a lot of at bats,” said Bland. “We could have rolled over early. Two or three easy plays in that first inning from being a completely different game. Granted, the game changes for (Orion), too. We at least started to overcome some of the mistakes we made.”
Junior Case Marlow got the start on the mound for WP/SE and probably deserved a better fate in the first inning.
