Absent one poor inning, the Dove Creek High School baseball team would have ended its April 15 home game against Shiprock High School with a win.
Numerous defensive errors during a decisive fourth inning doomed the Bulldogs, however, who lost 10-5, and fell to 4-7 on the season.
“Every game we play in, we have a one-inning drought,” said Dove Creek catcher Alex Ogas. “We have one error and another error and it quickly gets away from us.”
Kyle Schultz started on the mound for Dove Creek, pitched all seven innings, and allowed just three earned runs. Schultz’s curveball turned out to be especially effective as numerous Shiprock batters waved helpless at the junior’s bending pitch.
I had my curveball working pretty good,” Schultz said. “We could have swung the bat a little bit better and we had that one bad inning where things went downhill.”
Thanks in large part to to a run-scoring sacrifice fly by Jordan Ernst, an RBI single by Ogas and an RBI single by Colin Hobbs, Dove Creek led 5-1 after three innings of play before falling behind for good during the fourth inning.
“I thought that Kyle did a really good job on the mound and we had some good situational hits,” said Dove Creek manager Curtis Garver. “We just had a bunch of errors in that one inning.
The Bulldogs played in Dolores on April 16 and will next play in Igancio on April 18.
“We’re just going to keep hitting every aspect of the game and hopefully by the end of the season, we’ll put it all together.”