High school baseball: Big 1st inning punches Corner Canyon’s ticket to 6A championship series
A big 7-run first inning helped propel Corner Canyon past Mountain Ridge 10-8 Thursday to secure a date with Lehi in the best-of-three 6A championship series.
Corner Canyon batted around in the opening inning and took advantage of sloppy defense by Mountain Ridge, which had four errors to start the game.
By the time the second inning came around, each player in the lineup for Corner Canyon had already gotten a hit in the game.
Corner Canyon was led at the top of the lineup by Garrett Downing and Ryder Florence. Downing went 1 for 3 with a run scored and two RBIs, while Florence went 2 for 5, also scoring a run and adding two RBIs.
Corner Canyon’s bats were so hot to start the game that Mountain Ridge starting pitcher Ethan Iacono only got one out. After scoring just one run to start Wednesday’s game against Mountain Ridge, Corner Canyon knew it needed to see a lot more offensive production if it wanted to have a chance to make it to the championship series.
“Yesterday, we didn’t get a hit after the second inning. We just told our guys to keep believing and have that ‘next guy up’ mentality. We’ve had some big innings in the past this season and it was certainly nice to start with one,” said Corner Canyon head coach Jeff Eure.
Though Mountain Ridge found itself in a very deep hole early, it started chipping away at the deficit immediately. Juan Gonzalez hit an RBI double, and the team added another run to make it a 7-2 deficit.
Corner Canyon added to its lead the following inning behind an RBI single by Ryder Florence that would score the baserunner from third. Mountain Ridge, showing a lot of heart, kept fighting and got a run in both the fourth and fifth innings to keep the game within reach.
Corner Canyon continued to have good discipline at the plate as the game got into the later innings and tacked on two more runs in the top of the sixth with RBI singles by Lincoln Eure and Drew Whatcott.
There were some tense moments in the final inning, with Mountain Ridge scoring four runs in the seventh inning. With a runner on and down by two, Mountain Ridge was threatening to be able to complete the comeback, but it lined into a double play to end the game.
“I’m just so happy for our guys. They’ve worked so hard, and they just kept believing and fighting. Mountain Ridge is a really good ball club. They beat us four times and it feels good to finally get one against them,” said coach Eure.
Standing in the way of Corner Canyon and a 6A championship is Lehi, a matchup that Eure is very much looking forward to.
“Lehi is a great ball club,” he said. “I watched them play a little bit throughout the week. The only thing we can do is going out there play hard and just give it our best.”
