Canon City’s Logan Nethercot. (Tracy Renck)
PUEBLO — The Pueblo West baseball team seemed prime to write another chapter Tuesday in what was becoming a Cinderella South-Central League for the Cyclones.
Canon City, however, had other ideas.
Logan Nethercot collected four hits and pitchers Trey Owen and Dante Teigen stymied West’s offense, powering the Tigers to a 12-2 upset in an S-CL game at Andenucio Field.
“This was a very big win for us,” said the senior Owen, who had solid outing, allowing just two runs before being relieved in the fourth inning. “We stayed focused and made the routine plays.”
Canon City improved to 6-2 overall and more importantly put itself back in the league race with a 1-2 record. The Cyclones dropped to 5-4-1 overall and to 3-1 in league. West, with a roster full of seniors, advanced to its first Class 4A state title baseball game in school history a year ago before losing to Mountain View 7-6 in eight innings.
“Our mission (Tuesday) was to get back in the S-CL race,” Ritter said. “If you go 0-3, you make it real tough on yourself in this league. The kids did what they had to do to come out and get a win. We have been finding ways to win and this was a new way for us to win. We haven’t scored a lot of runs this year and we got some timely hits and scored some runs.”
Canon City lost to upstart Centennial (12-5) and South (7-0) in its first two S-CL games.
Those losses were a distant memory against the Cyclones as the Tigers roared out to a 5-2 lead after two innings off of West starting pitcher Dallas Dwyer.
“We needed to just bounce back and keep doing our thing and that’s what we were able to do,” said Nethercot, a 6-foot, 185-pound senior. “We played relaxed and we had a heck of a lot of fun (Tuesday).”
The Tigers pounded out 15 hits off of Dwyer and relievers Cam Brinkley and Zack Maize.
Trailing 5-2, the Cyclones had a grand opportunity to cut into the Tigers’ lead when they loaded the bases with no outs in fourth inning.
West failed to seize the moment.
The Cyclones’ Josh Drury was picked off of third base and the next two batters were retired in order.
Wasted opportunities became a theme for the potent West offense. In the fifth and seventh frames, the Cyclones also loaded the bases and came up empty on the scoreboard.
“We were just not ready to play at all,” veteran West coach Dan Sanchez said. “They threw out some slower pitchers and we hit better velocity, but we just have to make adjustments. We were just mentally flat and they beat us in all aspects of the game. We just deserved to get our butt kicked because we were not ready to play.”
Tim Ritter, Canon’s coach, knows his squad needs to use the West victory for a springboard as it also plays S-CL games against Pueblo East (Thursday) and Pueblo Central (Saturday) this week.
“We need to focus on East and then just take things one game at a time from there,” Ritter said. “We got ourselves back in the league mix.”