Hawks Fall Victim To Errors Lakeland Loses State Opener To Preston

It was painfully obvious that the Lakeland High baseball team didn’t pack enough WD-40 before heading to the State A-2 tournament.

Rusty from a 12-day layoff, Lakeland committed eight errors and nearly as many mental mistakes as Preston took advantage for a 5-2 victory Thursday at Treasure Valley Community College’s Elks Memorial Field.

Lakeland (21-5) will meet Bear Lake (16-7), which lost to Bishop Kelly 12-11, in a loser-out game today at 10 PDT this morning.

Preston 5, Lakeland 2

Hawks pitcher Jason Thomas allowed just one earned run, that coming to leadoff hitter Brady Keller who collected his first homer on an opposite-field shot, seemingly a half-swing, in the sixth inning.

Two batters later, David Bosen reached on Lakeland’s eighth error and scored on a single by Austin Hollingsworth that gave the Indians a comfortable 5-1 lead going into the top of the seventh.

Preston opened a 3-0 lead in the first inning. All the runs were unearned.

Lakeland coach Ken Busch said earlier in the week that the first inning would give him an indication as to how his team would play. Unfortunately, he was right.

“We never could recover from that completely,” Busch said. “That kind of epitomized our year. We got great pitching. Our bugaboo has always been defense. We made eight errors, and that doesn’t include mental errors that we made on the bases.”

The bottom line was Preston played defense behind the solid pitching of Scott Madsen (9-1). And Lakeland didn’t.

Lakeland shortstop Paul Gorton accounted for four of the Hawks’ eight errors.

Preston’s defense helped Madsen out of a couple of jams. The Indians turned two double plays, the second getting him out of a basesloaded, no-outs situation in the fourth inning.

After Lakeland’s Jeremy McMillen added to his school-record home run mark with his 10th to lead off the fourth, the Hawks filled the bases with two hits sandwiched around a walk. But Matt Ridenour hit a weak bouncer to Madsen, who fired the ball home to begin a rally-killing double play.

In the fifth, Lakeland’s Casey Sweeney was thrown out at the plate by second baseman Austin Hollingsworth on an attempted double steal.

“Their pitcher did a good job because I think we’re a good-hitting team,” Busch said. “He kept us at bay pretty much.”

During a team conference afterward, the Hawks told Busch that was the worst they had played since Little League.

Busch is hopeful his team will bounce back. No Lakeland team has gone to state and left after back-to-back losses. The Hawks won three state titles in the 1990s.

“The kids aren’t pointing fingers; everybody took some blame,” Busch said. “It’s mainly a senior-dominated team and I don’t think they want to go out that way. Hopefully, pride can take over and they’ll perform the way they know how.”