Defense Leads Team to 6-0

It was bound to happen and Thursday night it did; the offense was mearly average for the Resurrection Life Warriors and the defense carried the team to a 9-5 victory over Wooddale.

The bats didn't like the early gametime and sluggishly pushed out 13 basehits with four doubles and two homeruns. The team did draw six walks and had a total of 19 baserunners in seven innings.

Defensively, the team had 11 infield assists to go with the full 21 putouts with just one meaningless error. Excellent showing from the infield with a couple fine catches in the outfield.

Jeff Tenney captured Player of the Game honors with a 3-3 day at the plate with one of the team's doubles and homeruns. He knocked in three runs and played an excellent third base, shortstop and one inning at first. He finished with four infield assists, three putouts and an unassisted doubleplay.

It looked like business as usual as the first four batters of the game scored for Rez. Chris Wold walked on three pitches and Adam Hey followed with the same. Chris Burr walked to load them up for Eric Johnson who blooped one up the middle for an rbi-single. Jason Merritt had the first hard-hit ball of the game, lining out to the shortstop for the first out. Tenney stepped up and drove one deep, plating two runs on the double to make it 3-0. With runners on second and third, Austin Colby looped a sacrifice fly to right field to make it 4-0 and cap the innings scoring.

Wooddale came out and put two runs across in the bottom half to make it 4-2 after one inning. The team had three singles and used aggressive base-running to advance around the diamond.

The Warriors looked good at the start of the second as Andy Briggs cut one through the tough wind for a solo homer to open things. However, the next three batters went down in order and Wooddale came to bat. Wooddale went down quickly too and Rez stepped up to bat once again.

Adam and Burr had back-to-back singles to start the inning but a popout and hard-hit doubleplay ended the inning without any runs. The defense continued its good play, holding Wooddale scoreless in the bottom of the third keeping the score 5-2 after three. Tenney ended the inning with his nice doubleplay from shortstop.

Good defense leads to good offense as Tenney roped a solo shot to center to start inning for Rez. Jeff Johnson drew a one-out walk but that was it for the team and Wooddale came up in the bottom half down just four runs.

Wooddale singled to open the inning and used two more hits to plate one run. Two lineouts ended the inning, 6-3 Rez.

Wold doubled with one out in the fifth but was cut down on the bases on Adam's hard grounder. Burr lined one down the left-field line but Adam was cut down at third to end the inning.

Wooddale went scoreless in the bottom half to keep the score 6-3 going into the sixth inning. Rez again didn't score, lining out twice and leaving Tenney's single and Austin's walk on base.

This time, Wooddale answered the call, blasting a two-out two-run homer to make it 6-5 going into the seventh and final inning.

For the first time all season, the Warriors faced a serious challenge late in the game. The offense stepped up as Andy walked, Jonathan Engbrecht singled and Jamy Antoine delivered the big blow, knocking a double to right off the wall, scoring Andy with no outs. Wold singled to plate Jonathan and Adam hit a hard grounder to score Jamy to make it 9-5 with one out and one on. Burr singled to put runners at first and second for Eric, but Eric lined out to left and Jason grounded out to end the inning.

Tenney made a nice play on a tough grounder to start the seventh and Austin finished things off with two slick plays at shortstop to end the game. Wold picked up his fifth win of the year as the Warriors held off the upstart Wooddale team, 9-5.

The victory gives Rez a clean sweep of the league the first time through. At 6-0, the team is comfortably in first place with the first rematch of the season next week at 6:50 on field 2 versus Pax Christi.