Chipola trounces Wallace baseball

OZARK— One big inning was all the Chipola Indians needed to defeat the Wallace Govs. But for good measure, the Indians tacked on a couple of more.

After Wallace briefly took a 1-0 lead in the second inning, Chipola exploded for seven runs in the top of the third then tacked on five runs in the fourth inning and three more in the seventh in cruising to a 15-2 whipping of the Govs.

“This is the best we’ve played all year,” said Chipola coach Jeff Johnson, who saw his team improve to 5-4. “It’s good to see us play like this. We hadn’t been getting big hits when we needed them, and our pitching hadn’t been that good. But today (Tuesday) we got both.”

And what does Johnson credit this turnaround to?

“We worked the heck out of them yesterday (Monday) in practice and it paid off today,” he said. “We had a home run and we played good defense. We had been struggling defensively.”

As for Wallace coach Mackey Sasser whose team fell to 1-3, he said “Our guys have got to grow up. I can’t use that excuse of us being a young team because all of these guys played together in the fall. They’ve got to learn how to play the game at this level.

“We left several 0-2 pitches right out over the heart of the plate. When you do that, you’re going to get beat. We’ve got to be able to mentally prepare ourselves or its going to be a long year.”

Sasser’s Govs briefly took the lead when catcher Clay Fenwick led off the second inning with a solo home run over the left field fence. But in the top of the third, the Indians came back with a vengeance.

Ladson Montgomery and Edgar Delgado led off with back-to-back singles. After being bunted over by Sasha LaGarde, Tyler Bocock dribbled an infield single back toward the pitcher that scored the first run. After a walk and a pop out, Kaleb Barlow came through with the big hit the Indians were looking for.

With two outs, Barlow hit a three-run, bases clearing double in the gap between center and right field. Austin Southall followed with an RBI a single to right field, and Jerad Curry capped off the scoring with a three-run homer over the left field fence. That chased starting and losing pitcher Jose Ortega from the game.

After Peter Seiden’s RBI double scored the Govs second run, the Indians added five more runs in the top of the fourth. Chipola got RBI singles singles from Jordan Poole and Curry. But most of the runs came via a gift from the Govs. With the bases loaded, Barlow hit a high-hopping ground ball to the shortstop. The ball was thrown away and three runs scored, giving the Indians a 12 – 2 lead.

The Indians capped off their scoring in the seventh inning with three more runs. Bocock had an RBI single and Poole added a two-RBI single. Jerry Coram picked up the win for the Indians on the mound.

“Our team is mostly sophomores, but we are still learning to play together because a lot of the guys are transfers,” Johnson said.

 The Indians will host Walters State and San Jacinto this Friday and Saturday.

The Govs play at home Monday against Darton and Wednesday against Andrew College.

“We’ve got to get healthy on the mound,” Sasser said. “I think when we get a couple of our pitchers back, we’ll be okay.”