Rangers A season comes to an end

Richard Anderson photos
Laramie Rangers A first baseman Josh Peterson makes a swipe at a Gillette baserunner Friday at Cowboy Field. At bottom, catcher Nick Armijo talks it over with pitcher Nolan Carter.

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Down six runs after one inning, the Laramie Rangers could just never quite catch up, falling to the Gillette Rustlers 13-7 Friday in a loser-out game in the American Legion A District Tournament at Cowboy Field.

The loss ended the Rangers season at 11-22. Laramie opened the tournament with a tough 5-4 loss to Douglas on Thursday.

After a scoreless top of the first inning, Laramie starting pitcher Lance McCartney struggled to get outs, as the Rustlers pounded him for six runs on seven hits in the opening inning.

McCartney was replaced by Nolan Carter, who got the last out of the inning and held Gillette relatively silent until the middle innings before the Rustlers got going again.

“I just told them that you can only control what you can control,” Laramie manager Jeremy Francom said of his team's slow start. “You can’t control the past, you can’t control what happened. You can control what is going to going to happen. That’s what we tried to do for the rest of the game.”

The Rangers were able to chip away, cutting the Gillette lead to 7-4 before the Rustlers scored twice in the fourth and three more times in the fifth for another comfortable lead. Gillette finished with 17 hits in the game against three Laramie pitchers.

“Gillette is a good team; they hit the ball well,” Francom said. “Lance is a fastball pitcher and they hit the fastball really well. We got someone in there who could try to get them some curve balls to look at and he kind of held them off for a little bit. I’m not sure what it was in that first inning. But once we settled down and settled in, we started putting some runs up. But when you give them a six-spot in the top of the first inning, it is hard to rebound from that.”

And Laramie also couldn’t maintain any momentum once it was able to get going offensively.

“We’d score one and give up one; we’d score two and give up two; we’d score two and give up three,” Francom said. “We needed a big defensive stop and just didn’t get it.”

The Rangers did finish with 12 hits in the contest, with first baseman Josh Peterson leading the way with four singles. Tyler Mitchell had a single and triple and one RBI, while Carter and Derek Campbell both had a pair of singles and one RBI each. Zach Kersey also had a RBI double in the game, with Barry Thomas and Nick Armijo chipping in with a triple and single respectively.

Mitchell and Thomas were both named to the all-conference team that was voted on earlier by the league’s coaches.

Despite the tough finish, Francom said he was pleased with how his young team fought back on Friday and with the way it played throughout the season.

“They didn’t quit and they don’t quit. It didn’t matter if we’re down 10 or down five; we have the same mentality, a never-say-die attitude,” he said. “That is one thing that is going to helps these kids in the future, is they don’t quit and they keep going. We have good things to build from.”

Francom added that when you look at their results at the beginning of the season to now, it showed marked improvement.

“We were getting 10-runned at the beginning of the year,” Francom said. “After the game we were talking, and we said, ‘You guys are young and you have to realize you are playing older teams.’ I asked them who was playing Babe Ruth last year and we had 11 of 12 guys raise their hands. This year we got great experience and that is what you need to do to compete at the AA level. I think it is hard of them to see it now, but they definitely got good experience and they came a long way, not only as ball players but as people. They are a great, great bunch of kids and I absolutely enjoyed coaching every last one of them.”

Prep eliminated at State B

The Laramie Rangers Prep team saw its season come to an end, as the Wheatland B squad rolled to a 17-2 win Friday in the loser-out game of the State B Tournament in Sheridan.

Wheatland led 7-2 after three innings but scored 10 times in the fourth to put the game away. Laramie, which had just one hit in the 6-0 loss to Casper on Thursday, had three hits against the Lobos -- singles by Abel Casas, Alex Jordan and Taylor Boggess.

Hunter Wick, Casas, Sam Feldman, Boggess, Kevin Dooley and Jordan all pitched for Laramie.

Laramie finished the season at 13-19.