Burnet baseball loses to Waco Robinson

CAPTION: Cooper Evans has “the big hit” that put the Bulldogs on the scoreboard against Waco Robinson. Photo by Martelle Luedecke/Luedecke Photography

The Burnet High School baseball team lost to Waco Robinson 11-1 April 30 in game one of their best-of-three bi-district series in the Class 4A Division II playoffs.

Game two is set for 1 p.m. Saturday, May 2, with the third game, if necessary, 30 minutes following the conclusion of the second contest. Both games will be at West High School.

Burnet junior pitcher Mason Watson will take the mound in game two followed by freshman pitcher Hudson Crawford if the Bulldogs (13-17-1, 6-6 District 24-4A fourth place) can force a third contest.

“Hopefully (Watson) can throw well and we can get a win,” head coach Russell Houston said. “And then from there we’ll go to the freshman and let Hudson throw, and then we still have Kade Park that pitched quite a bit this year.”

In the opener, the Rockets led 2-0 in the first inning that was cut to 2-1 thanks to a base hit by sophomore Cooper Evans.

Robinson added two more in the fifth inning for a 4-1 lead.

But the Bulldogs looked to respond in their half of the inning by loading the bases. Instead, the Rockets got out of the jam to preserve the lead.

“We didn’t get the big hit that would have helped out a bunch,” Houston said. “Their guy was really good. He hadn’t been giving up a lot of hits. He didn’t have a high pitch count, so he was more than likely going to be able to finish out the game.”

And then senior pitcher Cohen Jorpeland reached his pitch count, so Houston had to decide on who was taking over.

“Cohen pitched really well,” he said. “So we made a decision to just try to get out of that game without wasting a lot of arms to a couple of kids who just threw a lot of strikes, and (Robinson) hit the ball well. We didn’t really walk anybody, we didn’t make mistakes. They just hit the ball well, but we decided that we needed to save some arms for the next two games.”

He pointed out most of the Rockets’ runs were earned.

“I think we made two errors,” the coach said. “They hit the ball well with two outs – I’ll say that. They got some big hits when they needed to. It was a really good ball game and then we decided to save some arms. So we pitched some kids that really don’t pitch a whole lot. And then that happens. It’s not like they pitched horrible; they just weren’t able to get to the sixth and seventh innings.”