By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–It took them until Games 13 and 14 to do it, but the North Salem Vikings baseball team has strung together a winning streak together with their 8-3 victory over McKay Thursday at home.

And though they were the visitors on their own field as McKay was suppose to host the game at McKay High School, it took a while for North Salem to find their rthythm early as the Scots carried momentum over from Tuesday’s game to stay withing striking distance with their North Salem Rivial entering the fourth inning down 4-3.

“We carried the momentum from yesterday, we’ve left some stuff as well, like our attitude behind,” said McKay’s Shane Tennis.  “We had a different attitude and approach and it helped us a lot.”

“It was tough, we have a tough field to play on right now but we found it at the end,” said Raska.

The field at Don Schaefer Stadium was hit by rain before the game and both teams had their fair share of battling through the adversity of the situation that they were given.

But Raska and company settled in, shutting down the McKay bats with Raska striking out 10 in the contest as the junior drove two in to help his cause as the Viks found a groove with their offense in the sixth-, and seventh-innings to ice the victory in favor of North.

“Our coach told us we needed to start playing as a team and not for each other and we started to tell each other that we had each others backs and we started to hit the ball better,” said Raska on the late game offensive output.

The Vikings seem to be finding their groove when they need it the most, as they had last year as they prepare for Friday’s and Monday’s games versus Forest Grove.

“Medford and all the other games have helped us with getting team chemistry together and just being able to say, ‘hey I got your back and you got mine’,” starts North’s Cameron Kallhoff.  “And we know that everybody would do anything for each other and  that’s just gotten us out of this hole that we’ve been in.”

For McKay, they’ll host McMinnville Friday as they continue to improve and search for their first Greater Valley Conference win since starting the season 4-1.

“I think what happened was that we didn’t have as good as communication as we should have,” said Tennis. “But we could always communicate better and it’ll turn out better.”

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Photos By Jeremy McDonald