Naches too much two times for Royal Knights baseballers

ROYAL CITY - One positive for Royal High School coming out of Saturday's baseball openers at Naches is that the Knights learned what it will take to keep up with the elite teams of the South Central A Conference.

"We faced one of the top programs in the state," coach Daren Christensen said. "Naches is historically a top five program every year."

The final scores were 9-0 and 12-2 in favor of the Rangers. The first game went the full seven innings, and it wasn't all bad.

Junior Aaron Johnson started the game and pitched three good innings. He left the game allowing only two earned runs. Freshman Juan Niebla pitched a scoreless fourth inning.

In the fifth, the Knights had several errors that allowed the Rangers to score three runs.

"Senior Johnny Montoya came in and did a good job finishing that fifth inning and show promise while pitching in the sixth," Christensen said.

Hitting was a challenge. The Rangers had several pitchers throwing in the mid-80 mph range with great command and change of velocity. Johnson, Jesse Santillan and Sam Christensen each had a single in the loss.

In the second game, Freshman Kaden Jenks started pitching. The Rangers got off to a fast start, scoring three runs in the first, but Jenks settled down and threw a scoreless second inning.

Sophomore Sam Christensen came on in the third and struggled with his command, walking several Ranger batters. He settled down and threw a great pitch that would have ended the inning with a double play with only one run scored. But there was an error.

"That is one of the things that we will be working on this week," Christensen said. "Many times we had errors that extended innings and allowed runs to be scored."

Junior Teddy Mead made his pitching debut and did a great job. Junior Robert Martinez showed some promise in his varsity pitching debut.

Several players got their first hit of the year, including Teddy Mead, Johnny Montoya, Kaden Jenks, Riley Lefler and Robert Martinez.

Royal's next game will be at Quincy today at 4:30 p.m. The home opener will be Saturday against Granger at 11 a.m.