Knights club Kardinals

KENAI — A complete-game shutout by Colony’s Damon Hammer gave the Knights a 9-0 victory over Kenai Central at Coral Seymour Memorial on Thursday to put the Knights into today’s Southcentral Conference championship game against rival Wasilla.

The Knights and Warriors play at 7 p.m. at Seymour Park in a game that can be heard at radiokenai.com.

Kenai faces the Houston-Homer winner at 3 p.m. today at Seymour Park in the second-place bracket. The second-place game determines the other conference state berth.

A six-run third inning by the Knights gave them a 6-0 lead despite only having one hit in the inning. The Knights had the bases juiced with no outs when Kenai junior pitcher Ethan Oliver hit Colony’s Ben Ross to score Hammer from third.

Kenai head coach John Kennedy said the third inning was tough to bounce back from.

“The frustrating thing is that they scored six runs on basically one hit,” Kennedy said. “We started off with an error and then we walked a guy and hit two guys and walked another guy. Our own mistakes created that problem.”

The lone Colony hit in the third came on a Jonathon Boyer single to right, where it rolled under Kardinals sophomore right fielder Dallas Pierran to score A.C. Schmur on an RBI and Jacob Butcher on the error. The error would send Boyer to third, where he would be stranded.

“We put runs up, but it wasn’t pretty, that’s for sure,” Colony head coach Jordan Chadwell said. “I give credit to the boys, they were patient. They didn’t try to do too much. But as a coach I can always be critical and looking for more.”

Oliver gave up a total of five runs on two hits while walking five batters and throwing two wild pitches. Oliver, who was pulled in the third inning with the bases loaded and no outs, was followed by sophomore Miles Jones, who gave up one hit, three walks and one earned run. The rest of the runs in the third were credited to Oliver.

Hammer threw seven strikeouts for Colony, five of them looking, in his complete game.

“It feels good, it was my first one,” Hammer said. “I was just hitting my spots, keeping it low and letting my defense help me out out there.”

After the third, the only other scoring was done by the Knights on a three-run triple by Butcher to left that brought in Ben Ross, Schmur and Matt Palmer.