LEBANON— The Waynesville Post 331 Warriors baseball team dropped an 8-0 game at the Route 66 Classic American Legion baseball tournament on Friday afternoon, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing— they need the experience.
“Most of the teams we’re playing here are 19-and-under,” said Warriors head coach Scott Turner after their loss to the Rolla Renegades. “We’re a 17-and-under team, so we’re a lot younger.”
Turner said that most of the teams in the he tournament have players with a year of college baseball experience. And this Rolla team is not the normal Rolla Legion team that the Warriors have been playing.
“They have a few guys who played college ball last year,” Turner said. “And they have some kids from elsewhere...they have one from Camdenton and one from Licking.”
The 8-0 loss on Friday wasn’t all bad. Waynesville made some good contact, he said, and showed signs of life against the older team. Many of the Waynesville players will be high school juniors and sophomores next year.
Despite only recording four base hits in the game, the Warriors (now 8-10 this summer) held their ground for the first three innings. Warriors starting pitcher Dustin Doyle gave up two runs in the first inning and only one in the third.
Things unraveled a bit in the fifth, however, when Rolla scored four runs on four hard-hit balls, including a ground-rule double that hopped over the fence in left-center field followed by a misplayed fly ball at the wall in cented.
The Renegades scored another in the sixth and final frame to take the 8-0 lead and the win.
For the Warriors, Patrick Holt, David Faulkner and Kevin Jones each went 1-for-3 while Sam Dowling went 1-for-2 and was hit by a pitch in the fifth.
Doyle pitched the complete game, giving up 6 hits and 8 runs with no strikeouts.
The Warriors play two games today, and said that it won’t get any easier. They’ll play Lee’s Summit at 9 a.m. and a team from Omaha, Neb. at 1:30 p.m.
“It will be a lot tougher, I think,” he said. “Lee’s Summit won this tournament last year and I expect the Omaha team to be very tough as well.”
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