By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–  With Sean Alvarado pitching Friday afternoon, the Saxons of South Salem found a way to keep West Salem off the boards on offensive and found a way to keep them off-balance on defense.

And it all started by a challenge by their coaches:  To go after them.

“I think we hit the ball pretty well, we definitely responded on how we’ve been hitting lately.  We faced some better pitching today than we have recently, I think we hit pretty good against it,” said ead Coach Max Price on the challenge and the game.

It took the Saxons a while though to find a groove down 1-0 entering the fourth, but between the fourth and sixth innings was where the bats and offense came to life for eight runs as South turned a 1-0 deficit to a 8-1 lead.

A double by Ryan Brown, a Kaiden Doten single, a wild pitch to score Brown to name a few of the plates during a bottom of the sixth inning that had the Saxons score five to ice the game.

As for Alvarado, who had six-and-a-third great innings and four strikeouts, described the performance he had entering the seventh inning up 8-1 on the Titans.

“Just having a good tempo, keeping everything under control, T-Man always expresses to me to keep under control, keep tempo, get back on the mound,” said the sophomore. “And shoutout to my guys back there, the seventh inning went rough but they had my back throughout the whole game.”

T-Man is in reference to pitching coach Brett TImmerman.

And Though West found a groove against Alavardo late with one out to load the bases, Gavin Fredinburg came in for relief and kept the damage to two runs as Fredinburg got the final two outs to seal the Saxons sixth-straight win and eighth on the season as South travels to West Monday for the rematch at 5pm.

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