By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore– It was a roller coaster of sorts for North Salem High School Wednesday versus Sprague that featured  several great plays and several not so good plays.

For the Olympians, they managed to covert those not so good plays into runs and limited the hot streak of the Vikings in Wednesday’s 3-1 victory.

The loss, in an already tight race for the playoffs in the Greater Valley Conference, North Salem Head Coach Chris Lee knows his team is right on the margin with no room for error.

“We’re playing on the margin, we don’t have much room for error,” described Lee.  “So when we make a mistake, it gets magnitifed because we got not to play air free ball or mistake free baseball, but we got to be pretty close to it.

“And we didn’t do that today, we let them off the hook a few times and it makes it tough.”

Down 1-0 entering the fifth, North found a groove offensively as Nick Raska got it going with a single, Jacob Pfenning moved him over with another single.

Soon, Sean Alvarado added another single to the Viks hitting total as he brought  Raska home to tie up the game entering the bottom half of the fifth as North Salem looked as if they picked up some mojo along the way in the inning.

“We were focused the whole time but getting that run was big,” said Cole Hamilton on the importance of that run that inning.

Sprague however, who caused some havoc on the North defense, did it once more as they regained the lead entering the sixth inning up 3-1.

The Vikings would continued to battle through the adversity that the Olys presented with strong defense and solid At-Bats, but the squad from North Salem couldn’t match the score on the scoreboard with Sprague come game’s end.

Lee said that he didn’t see much different between Tuesday’s walk-off game versus McMinnville and Wednesday’s game versus Sprague.

Both were intense games, but they just have to wait for their moment.

“This isn’t much different from the game yesterday, both games were pretty intense,” said Lee.”We just got to comeback and play baseball.  We just have to wait for the moment, pick our moment, turn it on and get focused and get ready to go.”

For Hamilton, he adds on to the idea of focusing up for their resumption of their game versus South Salem Thursday.

“We’ve fought through adversity all year, we just got to put together seven innings,” he said.  “Just not lose focus, I’ll say that’s the biggest thing is maintaining focus and keeping it which is huge.

“We’ll be alright, tomorrow’s a new day.  Baseball is baseball, you can lose one game by two runs and go ten run someone the next day.  So baseball is baseball.”

Follow Jeremy McDonald on Twitter at @J_McDonald81 or like jmcdonaldmedia on Facebook.

PHOTOS (PICTURES BY JEREMY MCDONALD)