Warriors notch first win

SOLDOTNA — Soldotna coach Robb Quelland couldn’t have been happier with the first game of the season.

And the Stars didn’t even win.

Treating the game more like extended spring training than the regular season, Soldotna surrendered 11 runs in the first two innings before storming back and eventually falling 15-10 in seven innings in the opening

tilt of a nonconference doubleheader Friday afternoon at the Soldotna Little League fields.

“We knew we had no intentions of winning this. It was a trial and error,” Quelland said of his team’s first outdoor action this season. “Score didn’t matter, it was innings. Almost a scrimmage. We played it inning by inning.”

The first two innings weren’t so kind to Soldotna. The third and fourth were better. And the fifth, sixth and seventh showed a team looking to return to state for the second straight season in only the program’s third year of existence.

The Warriors, who opened the season with an 8-6 loss to Service earlier in the week, jumped all over Soldotna starter Braden Price, tagging him for three runs on just one hit, three walks a hit batsman and a pair of errors

while batting around in the top of the first.

The Stars answered, though, when senior captain Justice Elson deposited the second pitch he saw this season over the left-field fence in slicing the gap to 3-1.

Junior returner DJ Stilchen followed a single by Price with another base hit to right field, easily scoring Price with Soldotna’s second run.

Wasilla plated seven more runs off Price in the second before the sophomore was removed in favor of returning junior Beau Sisson, who worked his way out of the inning with a strike out and pop out in limiting the damage to one more run and an 11-2 hole after two.

Trailing 13-2 in the bottom of the third, Soldotna battled back in hopes of preventing a five-inning, 10-run rule game.

After Wasilla hurler Dusty Wisdom walked freshman Jake Darrow to begin the frame, Price delivered an opposite-field, two-run homer and the Stars tacked on another run in coming within eight entering the fourth.

“Got to give Soldotna credit, they stayed in there and fought back and made a game out of it to tell you the truth,” said Warriors coach Myrl Thompson. “Whenever you have a big lead like that and you see it melt away, it gets to you. So, I’ve got to give them props for Soldotna for hanging in there.”

Elson took the hill in the fourth and promptly silenced Wasilla’s potent sticks.

“I had a little talk with him and settled him down,” Thompson said of leaving Wisdom in. “They kind of got into his head when they started scoring runs.”

Matthew Carroll is a Peninsula Clarion sports writer.