Wildcats claw back to top Van Buren

Springdale Har-Ber was within an out of suffering a series sweep and falling out of first place in the 7A-West. Then a two-out, three-run double forced extra innings where the Wildcats finished the comeback with a 8-5 win in eight innings against Van Buren on Tuesday. Har-Ber (23-4, 10-2) takes over sole possession of the conference coupled with Rogers’ loss to Bentonville West. Van Buren (17-5, 7-3) finishes the regular season next week with a two-game series against Fayetteville to open the week and a doubleheader against Bentonville on May 5. Van Buren won at Arvest Ballpark on Monday, 8-2, in the opener of the two-game series. Tuesday, Har-Ber loaded the bases in the top of the seventh inning, trailing Van Buren, 5-2. Trevor Brown reached on an infield single, Hunter Wood was hit by a pitch, and after a strikeout, Blaze Brothers reached on an error to load the bases. “We’ve got to recover from that and play through it,” Van Buren head coach David Loyd said. “That’s what you do, you play through it. Guys are going to make mistakes sometimes. You play through it and go to the next guy. It was a real competitive game. Both teams are pretty evenly matched. Those are fun to play in. We were on the happy side (Monday), we’re on the sad side (Tuesday). It was good for our kids.” After another strikeout, Blake Adams launched a towering double to right center, sending all of the runners home to tie the game. “They got the big hit to tie it up with two outs,” Loyd said. “When he first hit it, I thought it was going to be caught. We played him to pull it a little bit and he hit the gap with it. From then on, it was a struggle to get them out. It’s a great learning experience for our guys. Those are experiences you can’t practice. We’re going to be in those types of games the next two weeks.” Adams was hitless in three at-bats prior. “Our 3-hole hitter came up with the big double and turned the whole game around,” Har-Ber head coach Ron Bradley said. “You play a whole season and sometimes it comes down to one A.B. as far as the conference championship. Really, you look back on things like that and that one A.B. could change your whole projection as you move into the state tournament.” Har-Ber won it in the eighth, scoring three runs on a bases-loaded walk to Wood and a two-run single by Mac McCroskey. “It was good to see us respond,” Bradley said. “It seems like every time we play them they played us tough yesterday and outplayed us all around. They had us on the ropes.” Van Buren took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the fifth inning when Dakota Peters and Jackson Hurst, both of which singled sharply to open the inning, scored on an error. Landrey Wilkerson singled to score Seth Humphrey, who had reached on the two-base error. Van Buren added two more runs in the sixth on Peters’ run-scoring double and a single by Hurst, which was misplayed allowing Peters to score. “We did a great job of battling back,” Loyd said. “We didn’t do much the first three innings, but we battled back.” Lefty Blake Benson went all eight innings for Har-Ber, throwing 103 pitches and pitched around a leadoff single by Trevor Johnson in the eighth and retired the next three Pointers. “He was able to finish,” Bradley said. “That was his last hitter right there. He’s been undefeated this season. He’s not overpowering, but he does a great job pitching.”

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Van Buren High School Athletics

WILDCATS CLAW BACK TO TOP VAN BUREN

LELAND BARCLAY

Times Record | 4/25/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: Arron Shaffer