Western Boone Jr. - Sr. High School

LEBANON – After topping North Montgomery in the first game of their conference series a week ago, Western Boone baseball coach Michael Nance felt like his team was too satisfied with one win over the Chargers, and lost the second game. The Stars weren’t going to make the same mistake twice in a row. WeBo came out focused on Wednesday night at Memorial Park, topping the Tigers 12-0 in five innings to improve to 7-3 and 3-1 in the conference. “We were really locked in and I just told the guys – our bus ride over here was impressive,” Nance said. “We came to do a job. Last week, we were content with beating North Montgomery in game one and we weren’t going to be content this week.” This was the first time in a long while that the Stars were able to sweep the Tigers in a conference series. Nance, a former Lebanon player, said the two wins are something that the Stars can really build off of. “It’s no secret how much respect I have for coach Cosgray and their program,” Nance said. “They have a heck of a program, and to get these wins means a lot to me, but it’s just more about our goals for the season and continuing to move forward every night.” WeBo broke the game open with six runs in the second inning. With two on and one out, Marco Velazquez and Gavin Hawkins hit back-to-back run-scoring singles. After a pop out, Quinn Westerfeld hit a 2-run single to make it 4-0, then scored on a Luke Jackson triple. Jackson later scored on a wild pitch to make it 6-0. Lebanon head coach Rick Cosgray said falling behind early took the Tigers out of some of the things they want to do. “We focused a lot in the off-season on our bunting game, our hit-and-run execution and having a creative offensive approach,” Cosgray said. “When you get down six runs, it’s hard to play that type of baseball when you have to string together a bunch of hits. It’s important for us to get a lead, or stay within a couple runs so we can manufacture things, but we aren’t putting ourselves in a position to do that.” The Stars added three runs in the fourth on RBIs from Hawkins, Westerfeld and Cole Wiley, then three more in the fifth on a 2-run triple by Jackson Grimes and a Westerfeld single. Western Boone got eight hits from the top-3 in their line-up of Hawkins, Grimes and Westerfeld – but got contributions from up-and-down their line-up. “They are buying in,” Nance said. “We had a plan this week against their left handers to try and go to the opposite field. We executed two nights in a row and I was really impressed with our at bats.” Westerfeld held the Tigers to three hits in the game, and had four strike outs. The Tigers have been struggling in recent games to get their offense going. “[Westerfeld] kept it simple and threw a lot of first-pitch strikes,” Cosgray said. “It’s the same thing pitchers have been doing to us over the past few games. We haven’t done a good enough job of making necessary adjustments.” Lebanon, now 4-5 and 2-2 in the conference, travel to Lafayette Jeff tomorrow before hosting Crawfordsville on Saturday. “A week ago, we were coming off a sweep of Frankfort and the kids were very confident and had a lot of energy,” Cosgray said. “A week later, we have lost that. I’m not a different coach, and they aren’t different players, so we have to search within themselves to figure out what they need to do that be ready to go on a daily basis, because the talent is there – we just don’t have it consistently.” Western Boone is off until Saturday when they host Tri-West. “I think our confidence is through the roof,” Nance said. “I think it’s funny, because I’m not sure any one else outside our 23 believe it, but we believe in ourselves and want to keep this going.” Full recap of game one of the series is available on reporter.net. Will Willems is the Sports Editor of the Lebanon Reporter. Follow him on Twitter @Will_Willems. JV Baseball vs. Lebanon. Webo JV Stars drop game 2 to Lebanon 10-4. The JV Stars jumped into the lead in the 3rd inning when Evan Kiplinger grounded out scoring Braedyn Mathews and Jackson Long singled with 2 outs scoring Cale Scagnoli and Kahne Reid. Luke Cummins scored the other run on an error by the Tiger Defense. The Stars offense was led by Long with 1 hit and 2 RBIs, Reid, Mathews, and Owen Oakley each had a hit. Oakley got the start and went 4 innings scattering 7 hits, giving up 2 earned runs, and striking out 4. Unable to come up with key hits and untimely errors lead to the Stars putting themselves in a hole they were unable to dig out of. The Stars return back home on Tuesday as they face the Danville Warriors.