Laramie A splits with Gillette

by Bobby Abplanalp
Wyoming Sports.org

It was a tale of two games Tuesday at Cowboy Field in a doubleheader between the Laramie Rangers American Legion A team and the Gillette Rustlers. The Rangers cruised to a 14-2 win in the first game, followed by a crushing defeat in game two by a score of 15-8. With the split, the Rangers A squad is now 3-3 on the season, while the Rustlers are 13-10.

The Rangers jumped out early in the opening contest and led 11-0 after two innings. The second game would tell a different tale as Gillette led 3-0 after the second-inning and eventually increased its lead to 10-0 heading into the fifth.

“I thought the first game was great,” Rangers
A coach Brandon Ruckman said. “We came out and put pressure on them right off the bat. We kept it up the whole game; Abel (Casas) threw strikes for us and the defense did their job.”

“In the first game we wanted to beat these guys, because they beat us down in the Casper tournament this past weekend,” third baseman Tyler Mitchell said. “So we really wanted to get ahead of them.”

The second game quickly went in Gillette’s favor, unlike in game one.

“We just came out flat,” Ruckman said. “We didn’t put pressure on them at all, and the defense didn’t do their jobs and things like that.”

“In the second game, we just kind of got over-confident and they jumped on us,” Mitchell said. “They’re (Gillette) a good team, but we had a couple guys step in. Lance McCartney came in and pitched really well and we started to pick it up hitting wise and found the gaps. That helped us out a lot.”

In the second game, Mitchell was 2-for-3 with a single and a grand-slam home run. The four-run inside the park blast came in the sixth-inning with the Rangers trailing 10-2.

“I was just hoping I could get around to third at best. I wasn’t expecting a grand slam,” Mitchell said. “I just wanted to get my teammates in and try and battle back. He (Gavin Riener) threw me a good pitch down the middle and I took advantage of it.”

The Rangers would add two more runs in the sixth to cut the lead to 10-8, but that was as close as Laramie would get. Gillette would add five runs in the seventh off of three hits to end any chance of a comeback for Laramie.

With a 3-3 record so far this season, the young Rangers don't have a whole lot to complain about, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

“I think we have potential,” Ruckman said. “Right now it’s a roller coaster. We’ve won one, lost one, won one, lost one; it’s like we got happy with one victory when we could have had two. I think we need to come out and get fired up every game we play and not just one game.”

The Rangers A squad will be in action again Thursday when they take on the Rawlins Scorpions at Cowboy Field in a doubleheader beginning at 5 p.m.