WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2017
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A9
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Bulldogs rollick
on opening day
Hermiston sweeps
Hood River in
dual track meet
By MATT ENTRUP
Staff Writer
For the first time in
what seemed like months,
the Hermiston Bulldogs
were greeted with lots of
clear skies and sunshine
as they arrived Thursday,
March 16, at Kennison
Field to take on the Hood
River Valley Eagles in
a dual meet to open the
2017 track and field sea-
son.
Stuck indoors through
much of the offseason, the
Bulldogs showed they’d
still been hard at work
and swept the Eagles on
the team scoreboard. The
boys took an 85-50 victo-
ry and the girls won by a
similar margin 81-47. The
Bulldogs’ junior varsity
teams followed suit the
boys winning 57-48 and
the girls winning 55.5-
43.5.
Bulldogs coach Emilee
Strot said the wins might
have been the least im-
portant part of the day.
“With how much snow
and stuff, we literally
didn’t have a track to train
on all winter long, so we
were running inside in the
hallways, on the carpet,
trying to do what we can,”
she said. “And so the last
three weeks we’ve had to
put in a lot of hard work,
and our kids are beat up,
they’re tired. So today I
just told them to have fun
and compete.”
Hermiston junior Tyler
Rohrman said the clear
skies made it much easier
to do that.
“We kind of came out
here and we were kind
of surprised we were
in Hermiston, Oregon.
I mean, it’s a different
world with all this rain,”
he said. “But it’s great, the
track heats up, you can
smell the track, and you
just feel like track season
is here.”
Rohrman was one of
several Bulldogs to win
two events on Thursday
and blew away his com-
petition in each of the
hurdles events while also
placing second in the 100
meters and the 4x100 re-
lay.
In the 110-meter hur-
dles, Rohrman came out
smooth from start to fin-
ish as he glided over each
hurdle for a 15.34-second
time to win by more than
20 meters. His 300 had a
couple of hitches in his
stride, but he still cruised
to a five-second win with
a time of 42.30.
“I feel like where we
are in the season, we’ve
just been trying to get our
hips in shape for the hur-
dles, so I haven’t got a lot
of 300 work in. But I’m
really happy with it. I took
a lot of hurdles on my off
leg, which is really big for
me,” he said. “I feel like
we came out the 4x1 was
great, 100 solid. I feel like
I came out and did what I
needed to do today.”
Bulldogs junior Isaac
Sanchez also won two
events and picked up his
first victory by a large
margin in the 1,500
meters with a time of
4:30.46. He wasn’t exact-
ly thrilled with the time,
but considering he was 80
meters ahead of second
place by the time the race
ended he wasn’t judging
himself too harshly.
“It’s about 20 seconds
from my personal record,
so I could have done bet-
ter but it’s tough to run by
yourself,” he said.
Sanchez got the race he
was looking for in his next
event, the 800 meters.
He dropped back to
third to start as Hood Riv-
er’s Jesse Wiley set a fast
pace, but started to close
in after the first lap. With
200 meters to go Sanchez
and Wiley were running
shoulder to shoulder, and
Sanchez pulled ahead
with 125 meters to the fin-
ish. Wiley stuck with him,
though, and for the last
100 meters the runners
were stride for stride be-
fore Wiley leaned in at the
finish to win by .04.
“I was dead, I was
stumbling through the
finish. That was a tough
race. That was crazy,”
Sanchez said. “I really
didn’t know what to ex-
pect because the previous
track seasons the Hood
River guys didn’t really
race much 800, so I didn’t
know what to expect this
race. It was a great race
though.”
He wasn’t completely
tapped out though. After a
break Sanchez returned to
the track in the final event
of the meet to anchor the
boys’ 4x400 relay team.
Like the 800, the race
began with Hood Riv-
er setting a fast pace and
opening up big leads be-
fore the Hermiston run-
ners would reel them in
over the last 200 meters.
Hermiston found itself
behind at each hand-off
though, and when Hiram
Maciel passed the baton
to Sanchez he had about
15 meters to make up.
Hood River’s Nathan
Schmidli gave an initial
push to double that, but
Sanchez began pulling
him back right away and
overtook the lead with
150 meters left. This time
Sanchez continued to pull
away to give the team a
four-second win.
Also taking home
See TRACK, A10
STAFF PHOTO BY ERIC SINGER
Hermiston’s Sydney Stefani touches home plate while scoring off a hit by Ellery Jones during a game against St. Helens on
Friday at Rocky Heights Elementary in Hermiston. Hermiston won 16-6.
BULLDOGS WIN BIG OVER ST. HELENS
Hermiston wins
home opener
against Lions
By ERIC SINGER
Staff writer
The 2017 softball season
did not start the way the
Hermiston Bulldogs want-
ed it to, after Ridgeview
handed them an 11-run loss
in the season-opener on
March 14.
So when the Bulldogs
gathered at the field at
Rocky Heights Elementary
on Friday, March 17, for the
team’s home opener, there
was a little extra motivation
to bounce back. And facing
the St. Helens Lions, the
Bulldogs were able to re-
bound in a big way with a
16-2 victory in five innings.
“I think it had a lot to do
with the atmosphere here,”
Hermiston coach Kate
Greenough said. “The girls
were excited to have a lot of
people here and they were
drilling the ball all game.”
Hermiston (1-1) tallied a
total of 14 hits in the game
and four of the 10 batters in
the game finished with at
least two hits. Sydney Ste-
fani and Ashley Cameron
led the Bulldogs with three
hits apiece, with Stefani
adding three runs scored
and an RBI and Cameron
smashing two triples with
two RBIs.
“The girls were just pa-
tient today and they drove
the ball,” Greenough said.
“They hit it where it was
pitched, we didn’t swing
at bad pitches ... they wait-
ed for the pitch and drove
them.”
Another Bulldog that
had a big day at the plate
was Ellery Jones who went
2-for-4 but reached base
in all four at-bats. She
also added three RBIs and
scored four runs on the day.
Jones credited her success,
STAFF PHOTO BY ERIC SINGER
Hermiston coach Kate Greenough gives instruction to Hermiston players on Friday in their
game against St. Helens at Rocky Heights Elementary in Hermiston.
and her team’s success, at
the plate with the ability to
read the pitches well from
St. Helens pitcher Brooke
Scheer.
“I was reading it really
fast out of the hand so that
made it really nice,” Jones
said. “But we were able to
hit it to the right side, the
left side wherever the pitch
was and I think seeing the
ball was a big part of that.”
Jones scored the first run
of the game on a throwing
error by St. Helens’ right
fielder in the first inning,
and Hermiston added one
more run in the first be-
hind an RBI single by Ka-
lei Smith to make it a 2-0
game. St. Helens (0-2) then
answered with a run in the
top of the second on an RBI
groundout to cut the lead to
2-1.
In the bottom of the
second, Jones stepped to
the plate with runners on
second and third and two
outs and smashed a two-
run single into left field to
make it a 4-2 game. Both
Bailee Noland and Ashley
Cameron added RBI hits in
the inning as well, to give
Hermiston a 6-1 lead after
two.
St. Helens looked like
it might get some offense
going in the third inning,
drawing
back-to-back
walks and a bloop single to
right field to load the bases
with nobody out. However,
Hermiston was able to es-
cape the jam after allowing
just one run, as Bulldogs
pitcher Julissa Almagu-
er re-focused and induced
two easy groundouts and a
strikeout.
“That was huge for us,”
Greenough said. “It was
nice too because it’s ear-
ly in the season and that
might be a time where you
see kids get nervous and sit
back a little on their heels,
but it was huge for her (Ju-
lissa) to go after the ball
and great for the defense
because they were ready for
anything.”
“That’s something we’ve
really worked on is to stay
strong in situations like
this,” Jones added, “we
don’t back down and we
continue to work. I think we
really just backed our pitch-
er up there and we were able
to come back from that and
get out of the inning.”
Almaguer had a solid day
in the pitching circle, tossing
four innings and giving up just
three hits, two runs and two
walks with a pair of strike-
See SOFTBALL, A10
Hermiston gets walk-off win in opener
Hermiston sneaks
by Ridgeview
on passed ball
By ERIC SINGER
Staff writer
Representing the win-
ning run in the March 14
season-opener against Rid-
geview, Hermiston senior
Slade Gritz stepped off third
base to take his lead, creeping
up the baseline to get every
inch that he could.
“I knew we needed to
score there and as soon as I
got an opportunity I was go-
ing to be hauling it as fast as I
could,” Gritz said.
Sophomore
Jordan
Ramirez was at the plate for
Hermiston with two outs in
the seventh inning, meaning
Gritz represented Hermis-
ton’s last opportunity to win
the game without going to ex-
tra innings. And as Ramirez
evened the count at 2-2, Gritz
kept waiting for a chance to
sprint home.
And after Ridgeview
pitcher Nolan Merritt fired
that 2-2 pitch toward home
plate, the opportunity finally
came. The pitch squirted out
of the glove of Ridgeview’s
catcher and rolled behind
home plate, causing the catch-
er to have trouble locating the
ball. And as soon as Gritz
saw the ball squirt out of the
glove, he was off, sprinting as
hard and as fast as he could
toward home plate where he
finished off with a head-first
slide across the plate to give
Hermiston the 7-6 win over
Ridgeview on Tuesday after-
noon at Armand Larive Mid-
dle School.
It is the first season-open-
ing win for Hermiston since
2013, when the Bulldogs
took down Oregon City by
the same 7-6 score and have
since lost two-straight open-
ers to Ridgeview prior.
“It feels really good to
get the dub,” said Gritz,
who went 0-3 with two runs
scored at the plate. “The last
few seasons we’ve kind of
choked out of the gates and
we put up a lot of runs today
so it was nice.”
Hermiston (1-0) scored its
seven runs on a total of seven
hits and also with the help of
four Ridgeview errors. Kody
Moss and Wyatt Noland led
Hermiston’s offense with
two hits apiece, while Moss
added two runs scored and
an RBI. Daniel Gossler also
went 1-for-4 at the plate with
an RBI, one run scored and a
stolen base.
“We’re 13 guys strong and
that was a good team win,”
Hermiston coach Lance
Hawkins said. “We’re going
to need all 13 guys through-
out the year, and everybody
played today, everybody got
involved. We made our fair
share of first-game mistakes,
but I expect that and I’ll take
a win any way we can get it.”
Hermiston had a pair of
solid performances on the
pitching mound as well Tues-
day as the duo of Lukas Tolan
and Kody Moss got the call
in Game No. 1. The junior
right-hander Tolan started the
game and finished with three
hits and three runs allowed
over four innings with three
walks and three strikeouts.
He showed some first-game
jitters to start, allowing all
three runs, two hits and two
walks in the first two innings,
but over his final two innings
he allowed just one hit with
two strikeouts.
“I just tried to throw strikes
and give our defense a chance
to make some plays,” Tolan
said of his performance. “It’s
not good to walk anybody
either so I tried to stay away
from that.”
Moss came on in relief in
the fifth inning and had some
immediate struggles, allow-
ing four-straight batters to
reach base safely and even-
tually allowed three runs to
score in the inning. But like
Tolan, Moss settled in after
that and shut down the Ra-
vens. Hawkins said he was
very satisfied with what the
pitchers showed.
“I think with Lukas, his
velocity’s up and he’ll battle a
lot,” Hawkins said. “He only
had like 7 innings last year,
so he’s our most experienced
guy, but if he focuses he’ll
throw well for us. And Kody
coming in, his last inning was
See BASEBALL, A10