Friday, May. 08, 2009

CBBN Columbia race goes into extra innings

By Kevin Anthony, Herald staff writer

While the CBBN 3A district playoff seeds were decided about a month ago, the 4A district bracket still isn't set days after the regular season ended.

Kennewick, Southridge and Moses Lake all shared the CBBN Columbia title at 9-3, with none of them able to win a tiebreaker. A number draw determined the order for seeding games today and Saturday.

Kennewick, which swept Southridge during the season and split with Moses Lake, got the low number and plays the Chiefs at 4 p.m. today at Big Bend CC. The loser is the No. 3 seed and will host Cascade No. 4 Walla Walla on Tuesday.

The Kennewick-ML winner will play Southridge at 1 p.m. Saturday at Bomber Field in Richland. The winner will be the Cascade No. 1 and host a double-elimination crossover game next Friday; the loser will be No. 2 and play a loser-out game against the winner of one of the 3-4 games at Richland next Friday.

The 3A district tournament -- all two games of it -- will be Saturday at West Valley in Yakima. Hanford takes on winless Sunnyside at 11 a.m. -- the Grizzlies were outscored 294-11 this season, and the Falcons swept them 11-2 and 24-0 in their season openers -- with the winner playing West Valley. Both teams advance to regional play against the Greater Spokane League.

-- Suns senior third baseman Tyler Roberts finished his terrific regular season with a .651 batting average. Almost as impressive is this fact: In 80 plate appearances, Roberts struck out just three times, about once every 27 trips, or about 1 1/2 times a month.

Southridge as a team struck out just 59 times in 700-plus plate appearances, about three times a game. The Suns also drew a combined 146 walks and hit by pitches.

Andrew Mendenhall (.516) and Clayton Homme (.508) are second and third in the Columbia in hitting, and Roberts (34) and Homme (31) are tops in RBIs.

But coach Tim Sanders was just as excited by sophomore AJ Henderson's 1-for-2 performance in a doubleheader against Pasco on Tuesday as he was by any of the big numbers put up by his big bats.

That's because Henderson went 0-for-0 in the opener, with two walks, a hit by pitch and (this is the key) a perfect sacrifice bunt, and then in Game 2 cracked the first homer of his varsity career and followed that with a hit-and-run out.

Now that's a 1-for-2 to make a coach proud.

-- Kiona-Benton and Warden play today at Columbia (Burbank) to decide the SCAC East's final district berth. The teams split their league doubleheader Tuesday in Warden. The winner travels to Naches Valley for a first-round game Tuesday afternoon.