Varsity baseball crashes out of NCS against Albany

Ethan Frankel, Reporter|May 21, 2022

Rod Milstead

Senior pitcher Cal Amborn delivers a pitch to senior catcher Noah Strobel.

AWHS faced off against Albany High School in the first round of the Division 3 North Coast Section (NCS) playoffs, Tuesday, May 17 at AWHS. The Falcons came into the game as the 6 seed, and the Cougars the 11 seed.

Senior pitcher Cal Amborn started the game on the mound for the Falcons. Cal came into the game with a 0.68 ERA in 62 innings pitched.

Albany started off the game strong. The first batter reached on a hit by pitch, and then three singles gave the Cougars a 0-2 lead. Right after the singles, a sacrifice bunt moved across the third run, and Albany ended the first inning with a 0-3 lead. Albany kept their foot on the gas in the second inning, and scored another 2 runs, making it 0-5. 

“This game was the story of the season,” said varsity baseball coach Taber Watson. “They scored most of their runs off of softly hit balls into places we weren’t, while we barreled balls right at them.”

After the first two innings Watson ended Cal’s day on the hill, and brought in senior pitcher Elliot Joslin to replace him on the mound. Cal ended his outing allowing five hits, and five runs in two innings. He struck out two batters in his outing.

Senior catcher Noah Strobel frames a pitch into the strike zone. (Rod Milstead)

Elliot shut down the Albany offense, and put up the first scoreless inning for the Falcons. The Falcons responded to the strong defensive inning by scoring their first run of the game. This was repeated for the fourth and fifth innings as well, where Elliot kept the Cougar’s offense at bay, and the Falcons scored one run. 

Going into the sixth inning the Falcons trailed 3-5. Elliot once again shut down the Albany offense. The Falcon offense was unable to mount any type of resistance against the Albany defense, and ended up losing the game by a score of 3-5.

Elliot ended his outing with 11 strikeouts across five scoreless innings. One of the lone standouts on offense for the Falcons was junior third baseman Tiernan Mahon-Bratcher. Tiernan had 2 hits including a double, and also scored twice for AWHS.

“I felt confident on the mound, and put it all on the field knowing that it could be my last highschool game,” Elliot said.

For many of the Falcons’ seniors this could be the last baseball game they play. It was an emotional scene at the end of the game for many AWHS players. This loss ended the chances for AWHS to advance in NCS, so their season is sadly over.