Game 1 of the 4A baseball championship series concluded with the Snow Canyon Warriors taking the one-game advantage heading into Saturday.
Thanks to first-class pitching from senior Carston Herman, the Warriors secured a 3-1 win over Mountain Crest Friday afternoon. Snow Canyon will have two chances to secure the title for itself on Saturday.
Herman pitched all seven innings, finishing with just four allowed hits and one earned run to go along with seven strikeouts. Herman threw a strike on 69 of his 94 pitches.
“It was a new team so I knew they hadn’t seen me before, so it was going to be a lot harder to hit me the first time around,” Herman said after his performance. “So I treated it like a championship (clinching) game and tried to also treat it like playing catch with me and Mason (Strong). That’ll be my last time throwing to that kid so I had to make the last time count.”
Two of Herman’s four allowed hits and the only earned run came in the first inning’s first five at-bats. Herman proceeded to paint the entire strike zone the remainder of the game.
“Great for him to finish his career like that. I mean, nine wins for him, that’s close to the school record.” — Snow Canyon coach Reed Secrist
Herman ended the second inning with just 10 pitches, striking out three and starting a hot streak that saw Herman sit 11 straight batters.
“The first inning was kind of rough, trying to get settled in,” Herman said of his early struggles. “You feel the energy and kind of let it get to you a little bit. Once we tied it in the first inning I was like, ‘this is all I need’ and it was just go-time from there.”
Snow Canyon head coach Reed Secrist was proud of the way Herman performed on the mound.
“Great for him to finish his career like that,” Secrist said while mentioning that the win was Herman’s ninth of the season. “I mean, nine wins for him, that’s close to the school record.”
Snow Canyon responded to giving up the early run by snagging an early first-inning run of their own. After the first two batters were walked, Warriors’ senior catcher Mason Strong hit a single into left field, which allowed Luke Anderson to score and knot the game at one.
In the second inning, Mountain Crest pitcher Braydon Schiess struggled mightily to find the strike zone. Schiess walked two batters early, then threw two wild pitches in the same frame, which allowed two Snow Canyon runners to score.
That 3-1 margin created by the wild pitches in the bottom of the second would be the margin that would hold all the way until the end of the game.
Secrist praised the way his batters saw the pitches and extended at-bats, which allowed for scoring opportunities like the two runs that were scored in the second.
With the win, Snow Canyon finds itself in a favorable position as it heads into the final day of the series.
“I think it’s huge,” Secrist said when asked how big getting that first win is. “They’re going to be trying to figure out how to win two games tomorrow and we’re just trying to figure out how to win one.”
Secrist did mention that his players still need to maintain their focus heading into the next game, while bringing up the fact that his 2011 squad won the first game before dropping the final two games to Spanish Fork to lose the state championship.
Secrist said that if they need to grind it out like they did Friday afternoon, then that’s what his guys will do.
“I’ll take two hits and a win any day,” Secrist said.