North baseball earn the crown

Edmond North’s baseball team continued their unbeaten Spring Break streak Wednesday afternoon to win the Best of the West Tournament Championship. The Huskies beat Sunnyslope High School 5-1 Wednesday afternoon to cap off a week-long record of 4-0-1. Edmond North’s Jackie Robinson finished things off Wednesday by hitting a one-out, two-run home run out of right field. Robinson’s hack scored Carter Hines, too, and the hammer pushed North to their fifth and final championship score. Before Robinson’s homer, though, North had already evaporated an early Sunnyslope lead. Colby Entwistle reached on a two-out single in the top of the fourth inning. The hit came after Robinson reached base on a fielder’s choice, and it moved Devin Dunford — Robinson’s pinch-runner — to second. Noah Miller equalized a batter later, singling in Dunford to tie it 1-1. Karsten Menard reached an inning later the top of the fifth. Menard made it on with two-outs already, but Hines doubled as the next batter up and swinging on a 1-2 count. The hit scored Menard and gave North their first lead of the afternoon. Robinson then hammered a hard-hit ball through the right side of the infield. Ruled an error, the at-bat scored Hines’s courtesy runner Max Bouvette in an inning that saw two Sunnyslope errors cost two Edmond North runs. Sunnyslope’s early 1-0 lead was also evaporated by the pitching duo of Carter Hines and Caleb Isaacs. Hines started Wednesday’s championship, earning the win for seven strikeouts, four hits and an earned run in five innings of play. Isaacs — fresh off a near-perfect game last week — pitched two innings and struck out three to earn the save. North’s win continued their unbeaten trip into Spring Break. The Huskies dropped Greenway 9-4 before an 11-all tie with Cactus Shadows ended their Monday games. Karsten Menard then hit 3 RBIs Tuesday against Lee Williams, and the Huskies scored five runs in the final two innings to beat the Volunteers, 8-3. Finally, Kruz Simmons matched with a 3-RBI game himself, and the Huskies scored seven in the first and four in the second to better Sunrise Mountain 12-2 Tuesday night. Colby Entwistle led North in hits in Arizona with a week-long line of 9-for-16 (.562 percent). He also had a team-high five extra-base hits after knocking four doubles and a triple. Jackie Robinson was the only Husky to hit in all five of their tournament games, finishing at 8-for-18 (.444 percent) with a team-high nine RBIs, two home runs and two doubles. Janson Reeder snowballed his five-RBI, perfect-at-the-plate opener against Greenwood Monday to a week-long total of 7-for-17 (.412 percent), seven RBIs, two home runs and two triples. Carter Hines had a 5-for-12 (.416 percent) line with three RBIs and two doubles, and Kruz Simmons was 6-for-14 (.429 percent) for four RBIs and a double and triple. North outscored teams 45-21 during their championship claim. The Best of the West Tournament is an invitation-only, intrastate contest held at participating high schools in the Phoenix, Ariz. area. Twelve teams were invited to compete this season with Edmond North, Cache and Yukon as the only Oklahoma-based teams participating in the bracket. North thrice beat teams at their own home ballparks (Cactus Shadows, Sunrise Mountain, Sunnyslope), traveling 1,013 miles to wrest away the tournament title on Wednesday afternoon. The Huskies next play a home-and-home with Edmond Memorial on Monday and Tuesday of next week. Varsity starts at 7 p.m.

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Edmond North High School Athletics

NORTH BASEBALL EARN THE CROWN

AARON ALBERTSON

Edmond Sun | 3/21/2019

PHOTO CREDIT: Amy Dunford