Barton sweeps Hutchinson; drops two at West leader Seward
The Barton County Community College baseball team scored a big doubleheader sweep of 2nd place Hutchinson Sunday at Cougar Fields, one day after dropping a pair of games to West leader Seward County in Liberal. The Cougars won both games Sunday by a 5-3 score against the Blue Dragons after losing 4-2 and 8-3 in Liberal to Seward County. Barton is now 3-3 in the West and 15-11 overall. Seward continues to lead the Jayhawk at 6-0 with Hutchinson 2nd at 6-4. Barton is tied with 3rd with .500 mark.

Highlights
Barton moved into a tie for 3rd with the sweep of Hutchinson Sunday, coming from behind in both games. The Cougars had taken a 2-0 lead in the opening inning of the 1st game thanks to an unearned run and an RBI by Jeff Christy. But that lead vanished as Hutch scored 1 in the 3rd and 2 in the 4th for a 3-2 lead on Barton's AJ Knight. The Cougars evened the score in the bottom of the 4th on a Mark Newton single that scored Wes Renfro. From there, Knight took over. The sophomore allowed Hutchinson just one more base runner – a 2-out walk in the 7th. Barton took the lead in the bottom of the 6th when Newton singled in Christy and Jerry Cook for the 5-3 lead. Knight improved to 3-0 with the win, allowing just the 3 runs and striking out 8.

In the 2nd game, the Cougars had to come from farther behind as Hutch shot out to a 3-0 lead in the top of the 1st off Ryan Wagner. But Barton quickly worked its way back to a tie and eventually the lead. Renfro doubled and scored in the 1st to make it 2-1. In the 2nd inning three walks, a hit batsman and an error allowed Barton to score 2 runs without a hit and tie the game at 3-all. The Cougars took a 4-3 lead in the 3rd as Cook reached on an walk, moved to 2nd on a ground out, moved to 3rd on a wild pitch and scored on a passed ball, once again giving Barton a run without a hit in the inning. Barton added another run in the 4th when Steve Elson scored on a single by Cook. Wagner got the win for the Cougars to move to 1-2 while Ryan Phillips pitched the 7th inning to pick up his 2nd save. Barton collected just 3 hits in the win.

The Cougars nearly started the weekend off by handing Seward County its first loss in the Jayhawk West, leading 2-0 after 3 innings. Renfro hit a solo homer in the 1st and Christy drove in Elson with a double in the 3rd. That is where the game stayed until the bottom of the 5th when Seward scored 4 unearned runs off Derek McDaid – the hard-luck loser in the contest.

In the 2nd game, Barton fell behind 5-1 before scoring – the only run was a Christy home run. The Cougars did make it 5-3 thanks to a Newton 2-run single in the 5th that scored Renfro and Harrison Harber but that was as close as the Cougars would get.

Stats
Stats can be found at the Barton County Website at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Wed., March 31 – at Dodge City, 3 pm (West doubleheader at Dodge City)