While Belgrade came up a little short of an opening day sweep Saturday in Polson, second-year head coach Joel Barnett was mostly pleased with his team’s performance.
The Panthers routed last year’s state runner-up, Whitefish, 15-1 to begin the day. Then they lost a back-and-forth battle against defending state champion Polson, 10-8.
“That was a great way for us to open up. We were really excited about it,” Barnett said of the competition. “Overall, that game was just two pretty good teams competing in that Polson game. I didn’t love our defense, but also, we just haven’t worked it enough. But at the end of the day, we just kept competing.”
Polson, which defeated Whitefish 15-8 in each team’s season opener on Friday, scored the game-winning runs in the bottom of the sixth when the Panthers misplayed a fly ball. At the time, the score was tied at 8-8 after Belgrade had tied it in the top half of the inning.
“There was one big play where we let a ball drop that we know our pop fly or fly ball priorities, and we just didn’t have them practiced enough,” said Barnett. “That’s just one of those things with being stuck in a gym.”
Belgrade’s outfielders were only able to get outside briefly on the high school’s practice football field to work on fly balls during preseason practices. In all, the defense committed seven errors on the day.
“With those errors, it was just a lot of stuff that I know we’re going to have dialed in once we we’re outside for our practices,” said Barnett. “It really all came down to fly ball communication in my mind. There was a lot of confusion on a bunch of pop flies that we usually dominant in that situation. We just haven’t been able to see a lot of fly balls off the bat.”
Belgrade had an opportunity to tie the game or take the lead in the seventh after loading the bases with one out. But Landon Shoemake took over on the mound and quickly got Polson out of the jam.
“Just to show how well we competed; we ended up loading up the bases in that seventh inning,” noted Barnett. “We got really close to getting right back in that game again.”
Three Belgrade pitchers combined to allow 10 hits and strike out four. Brayton Van Dyken was saddled with the loss after taking over in relief in the sixth.
Against Whitefish, Landon Wanders scattered five hits and struck out three in three innings of work in picking up the win. Brandt Turcotte did not allow a hit in two innings of relief.
Barnett said his player’s two-strike approach at the plate was a highlight of the day, and he liked his team’s bunting. The Panthers had seven hits against Whitefish, and Ryas Olson had two of the team’s six hits against Polson with three RBIs.
“Overall, I was very impressed with how our team competed,” said Barnett. “It was impressive to me.”
Belgrade, which placed third at state last year, returns to action March 21 with its conference opener at East Helena.
Boxscores
Belgrade 15, Whitefish 1
Belgrade 642 30 - 15 7 2
Whitefish 100 00 - 1 5 3
Landon Wanders, Brandt Turcotte (4) and Andrew Hazen. Brady Howke, Tait Orme (1), L Stewart (3), CJ Thew (5) and Avery Caton, Luke Dalen.
