Broncbuster Baseball Clinches Home Field For Regionals

Garden City, KS (westernkansasnews.com) The Garden City Community College Baseball team’s bats were hot even though the weather was not on a cold day at Clint Lightner Field where the temperature was lucky to top out at 45 degrees.  

The Broncbusters dominated outscoring Pratt 27-3 over the two games 15-0 and 12-3.  With two wins on Monday Garden can win the tiebreaker over Hutch and move up to the second seed in the west during next week’s opening round of the region VI baseball tournament. 

Game One Highlights

In the first game, Garden City starting pitcher Noah Draper dominated going the distance for his second complete game of the season and tied Brendan Peitsmeyer for the team lead in wins with seven as the Broncbusters ended the game early in a run rule shortened five innings 15-0.  

Draper ended the game retiring seven batters in a row and allowing just two singles, while striking out nine.  

Leftfielder Sean Kennedy sparked the offense for the Broncbusters with a two run single in the first off Beavers starter Craig Smith.  Two innings later Kennedy added a solo homer off Smith and then had a RBI double off Hayden Wheeler in a nine run fourth inning.

Broncbuster third baseman Alex Nielsen and first baseman Kyle Lopez both went deep in the fourth off Pratt’s Parker English.  Nielsen had his seventh homer of the year and Lopez tacked on his ninth of the season.  

Game Two Highlights

Game two Garden City starting pitcher Connor Burns notched his fourth win of the season and his first complete game giving up three runs on nine hits while striking out six.  Pratt Leftfielder Kailen Glover went deep for his 10th homer of the year, a two run shot tying the game at 2-2 in the second inning.

The game was the Mason Brown show.  The Garden City catcher knocked in seven runs for the game.  He had a pair of RBI singles, one in the first and the other in the seventh.  His big blast came in the second when he powered out a grand slam to left for his third homer of the year to give the Broncbusters a 6-2 lead.  Garden ended up winning 12-3.

Post-game Comments Coach Chris Finnegan

With the win Garden City reached forty wins for the fourth time in 11 years under Head Coach Chris Finnegan.  The series continues Monday at 3 from Williams Stadium. Pre-game is at 2:45 on ESPN 99.9 and westernkansasnews.com.