Huskies drop CWAC doubleheader to Ellensburg

OTHELLO — The Othello Huskies lost a little traction in the Central Washington Athletic Conference coming out of spring break, giving up two in a doubleheader to Ellensburg on Saturday at Husky Field.

Actually the Huskies (7-4, 5-4 CWAC) didn’t give anything up, the Bulldogs (9-1, 8-1 CWAC) rolled into town and took two, roughing up the Othello pitching staff to win the first game 10-5, then finished it off with a 15-1 victory in the late game.

With a rematch with East Valley coming up on Tuesday, this was just one of those weekends the Huskies have to put behind them in a hurry.

“We have to disregard it, it’s over. We need to move on and try to learn from it and get back to the basics,” Huskies coach Sonny Garza said. “Ellensburg can hit the ball, but we really struggled on the mound today and gave them too many free bases, which is what it came down to.”

Ellensburg split with Selah (9-2, 9-1) earlier, handing the Vikings their only conference loss. Despite scoring 10 runs on 12 hits in the first game and 15 runs on nine hits in the late game, Bulldog head coach Todd Gibson knew he was in for a fight.

“I forewarned our kids not to take this team lightly. Sonny has these kids ready. They play with a lot of pride and I think he’s changing the culture here a little bit from what I can tell,” Gibson said. “We drove the ball extremely well today. Until now, we’ve been popping up here and there. But today we hit it hard.”

Ellensburg 15, Othello 1

The Bulldogs blew a 3-0 lead wide open in the second inning, taking advantage of two walks and two plunked batters, scoring six runs on three hits, leaving the bases loaded. The Huskies scored their lone run in the fourth when T.J. Martinez drew a one-out walk and A.J. Pruneda drove him in with an RBI double. Othello, which stranded six runners in the first three innings of the first game, left three on, including Camron Valdez, who singled behind Pruneda.

“We just kept working, legging out ground balls, doing anything we could to get guys on base,” EJ Valdez said. “We have a big game with East Valley, so we have to leave this behind. We’ll keep working hard and hopefully we’ll stay in the (CWAC playoff) hunt.”

The Huskies middle infield pulled off the defensive play of the day in the fifth inning when shortstop Camron Valdez dove to his left to snare a ground ball near second base, flipped it to Josh Garza with his glove and the second baseman completed the double play with a nice throw Abel Gomez who handled a skipper in the dirt at first.

Ellensburg 10, Othello 5

Arcenio Martinez turned on a waist-high fastball and drove it over the left-field fence for a three-run shot in the bottom of the seventh and the Huskies went down swinging. Abel Gomez went 2-for-2 with a double and Arcenio Martinez had the blast for the Huskies, who stranded two runners in the first, three in the second and another in the third. “I’m swinging the bat pretty good right now. He came right down the middle with a fastball and I got all of it,” Martinez said. “I’ve been putting the work and learning more about technique. We just have to keep working hard and put this one behind us.”

Othello travels to Yakima on Tuesday for a key CWAC match-up with East Valley.

Game 1

Ellensburg   520 003 0 - 10 12 2

Othello        000 020 3 -  5  7  5

HITS: Abel Gomez 2-2 (2B), Arcenio Martinez (HR) 3 RBI

Game 2

Ellensburg    362 50 - 15 9 0

Othello        000 10 -   1 4 4

HITS: AJ Pruneda (2B) RBI, Camron Valdez (2), Alfredo Carieno