Marble Falls baseball performs well at Comal tourney

CAPTION: Ben Sowers is one of several pitchers who are on the Mustang staff and give head coach Tyler Porter options. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

The Marble Falls High School baseball team went 2-1 at the Comal Creek Invitational Tournament March 5-7.

The Mustangs defeated Corpus Christi Moody 9-6 March 5 and Beevile Jones 3-2 before losing to Corpus Christi Tulso-Midway 15-2 both on March 6.

“Overall, I’m pleased,” head coach Tyler Porter said. “The third weekend is always tough because you’re sitting on district games on Tuesday. At (Class) 6A schools in bigger places I’ve been, you have a bunch of arms, so you don’t stress as much. But for us, we want to make sure that we had all our guys ready for Tuesday so that was the main focus.”

Against Moody, the Mustangs took a 2-0 lead in the first inning when junior Grant Carter singled to score a run.

Sophomore Crawford Mattox hit a homer in the third inning.

Anderson Liscum pitched three innings in relief, allowing five runs off four hits and two walks with a strikeout. He helped his own cause by batting in four runs in the middle of the lineup. In all the Mustangs recorded 13 hits and five earned runs.

Junior pitcher John Alan Whittle threw two hitless and scoreless innings. As a batter, he and Liscum each had three hits.

Pitching dominated the Marble Falls-Beevile contest with each staff collecting nine strikeouts.

But Carter got the Mustangs on the board by stealing home in the third third inning. Beeville answered by scoring on a wild pitch to take a 2-1 lead in the fourth inning.

Beeville committed an error allowing a run to score in the fourth inning then senior Canon Cochran hit a single down the first-base line for the 3-2 lead. Carter stole three bases.

Pitcher Landon White got the win by striking out seven and allowed two hits and three walks but no earned runs in four innings. Ben Sowers got the save.

“We had adversity,” Porter said. “That was good to see from the kids.”

Tuloso-Midway, which was a late addition because the Warriors’ original tournament was canceled, scored all the runs it needed in the bottom of the second inning thanks to plating seven on five hits. In all the Warriors had 12 hits.

Carter and Cochran each drove in a run, while Whittle led with two hits in two at-bats.

District 24-4A play starts with the Burnet County rivalry. The Mustangs will travel to play Burnet on its Bulldog Diamonds Tuesday, March 10, then welcome the Bulldogs to Scearce Field Friday, March 13. The junior varsities play at 4:30 p.m. and the varsities follow at 7 p.m.

Porter noted that because the start of district play, he decided to limit the work of some of the pitchers. Atreyu Machacek also pitched along with Liscum and Sowers.

“He looked good,” he said. “A lot of guys went short for various reasons. We didn’t necessarily have all our arms available. Pitching was different, but it still did well. Some kids were put in some pretty tough spots against some good teams. I definitely have some combinations of kids, but I think we found a couple starters and then a couple guys who I would call kind of first in relief. I think we have a combination of starters and guys who are behind them. But offensively things went well. A lot of good stuff over the weekend.”

CAPTION: Head coach Tyler Porter (left) and Grant Carter saw a lot of one another at third base. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro