Cats struggle in opening tournament

RIO RANCHO – Clovis High baseball coach Richard Cruce knew his team might take some lumps in a season-opening event hosted by Cleveland H.S., and he was right.

But he also wanted to find out something about his squad.

The Wildcats dropped all three of their games in the affair, falling to Belen 5-3 on Thursday, Piedra Vista 9-3 on Friday and the host Storm 15-3 on Saturday.

“I wanted to jump in and see where we stood early in the year,” Cruce said. “The first two games we kind of competed, and then we had a letdown in the third game.”

Junior Jayden Jameson pitched fairly well against Belen (3-0) before the Eagles erupted for a three-spot in the fifth, including a two-run homer by junior Angel Garcia. The Cats answered with three of their own in the sixth, getting RBI hits from sophomore Quinn Culiver and junior Bernie Lopez, before Belen closed it down.

Piedra Vista (3-0) jumped on the Cats for an 8-1 lead through three innings on Friday. Senior Dax Vigil drove in three runs for the Panthers with a sacrifice fly in the first, a triple in the second and a single in the sixth.

Junior Jashiah Mendoza had a pair of run-scoring singles for the Cats, while Jameson also had an RBI single.

In the finale, Cleveland put a seven-spot on the board in the first inning and cruised despite collecting only seven hits in a game shortened to 4 ½ innings by the 10-run rule. Senior Logan Kinter and sophomore Gabe Nelson drove in three runs apiece for the Storm (2-1), coached by former Cats coach Shane Shallenberger.

Clovis’ pitching struggled a little against Cleveland, while also hurting the team were 13 errors in the three games compared to just two for their opponents.

“The first two days, I was proud of our pitching staff,” Cruce said. “We should’ve won the first game, but we killed ourselves defensively.”

The Cats were slated to open their home slate against Lovington on Tuesday night at Bell Park. They will be in Hobbs and Roswell over the next two weekends for tournament competition.