Wet weather spoils final day of tourney

WASILLA — An emotional weekend of baseball came to an anticlimactic end Sunday when the final day of the annual Todd Ryan Memorial tournament was rained out.

“The field was too wet,” Alaska Road Warriors manager Steve Mossburgh said Monday. “It rained a lot.”

The Road Warriors had been scheduled to play a visiting team from Napoleon, Ohio, in the tournament’s final game Sunday. The missed game may have been a blessing in disguise for the Road Warriors, as the River Bandits had stormed through the five-team, round-robin tournament without surrendering a run.

The Ohio team was declared the tournament’s winner after posting a perfect 4-0 record over three days of play.

The Road Warriors went 1-2 in the tourney, losing to Fairbanks Friday before picking up a big come-from-behind 12-11 league win over Service on Saturday night. Alaska then had to come back for a second game against East, a game that Mossburgh said his team just wasn’t up for after the thrilling Service game.

“I think we were pretty drained after that game,” he said. “They were just tired.”

East easily got past the Road Warriors Saturday night, shelling three different Alaska pitchers in a 9-0 shutout.

Mossburgh said he elected to throw some of his less-experienced pitchers against the T-Birds, giving innings to Sterling Nielsen and Kyle Bovy, two players who have seen most of their action in the field this year.

The game did not count in the regular-season standings, and Mossburgh said he also let Cory Cowgill pitch an inning, the first appearance for the team’s regular left-fielder as a pitcher.

“He’s been bugging me to let him pitch,” Mossburgh said.

Despite the loss to East, Mossburgh said the big win over Service was one of this season’s highlights, a victory he thinks the squad can use to build momentum heading into the season’s second half.

“Everyone was just relieved that we won that Service game,” he said.

The Road Warriors currently have an 8-7 overall record and at 6-4 in league play are currently tied with Fairbanks for fifth place in the 11-team league. First-place Chugiak has a 10-1 league record, and the Road Warriors will get a shot at the Mustangs today when the teams square off at 6:30 p.m. at Lou McManus Field in Wasilla.

Chugiak beat the Road Warriors 13-3 in the teams’ only other meeting this year.

The Chugiak game will be the first of three for the team this week, and the Road Warriors figure to be busy over the next month, with 13 games scheduled between today and the season finale on

July 26.

The state tournament begins Aug. 2 in Anchorage. Last year’s Road Warriors team finished third at state, losing back-to-back games to South and Chugiak, which went on to play for the state title, with South taking home the title.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com