Down a run in a game they had to have, the Kent All-Stars dramatically pulled one out to play for another day.<\/p>\n
Patrick Sanchez drilled a walk-off, two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning, lifting Kent past Fife-Milton-Edgewood (FME)\/Steel Lake 3-2 in a Majors Division District 10 semifinal playoff game at Auburn’s Sunset Park on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Kent advances to play rival Auburn, defending district champion, in the championship game at noon Saturday at Sunset Park. Kent, which lost to Auburn 2-1 earlier in the double-elimination tournament, needs to win to force a second, winner-take-all game Saturday. Game 2, if needed, will start around 3 p.m.<\/p>\n
Rain scrubbed the original 6 p.m. Friday start to Game 1.<\/p>\n
FME\/Steel Lake’s season came to an end.<\/p>\n
At stake for Kent is pride and an elusive state berth. Kent hasn’t been to state for several seasons.<\/p>\n
“Auburn’s a good team, without a doubt. It’s going to be tough to get through them,” said Kent manager Ernie Hernandez. “They have great pitching … great team. We know them. We played against them for the last three years through summer ball. … Good athletes over there. It’s going to be very competitive. It’s going to come down to pitching and defense.”<\/p>\n
Against FME\/Steel Lake, it came down to a swing of a bat.<\/p>\n
After Zachary Hernandez led off with a single to right, Sanchez stepped to the plate to rip a line-drive shot that carried about 260 feet over the left-field fence. After trotting around the bases, teammates mobbed Sanchez at home plate.<\/p>\n
“Very strong kid,” Ernie Hernandez said of his standout shortstop. “He’s been (hitting home runs) during the regular season, and his bat’s been hot throughout this whole tournament with a lot of base hits, line drives … as you can see.”<\/p>\n
Kent put up two runs during a walk-filled first inning, but FME\/Steel Lake scored two of its own to even it up.<\/p>\n
Kent had its chances, leaving the bases loaded in the fourth and stranding two more base runners in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Miles Ducharme beat out an infield single, scoring Eli Nordling from third base to give FME\/Steel Lake a 2-1 lead in the sixth.<\/p>\n
“My hat’s off to these guys here. Incredible. They played their heart out,” Ernie Hernandez said of FME\/Steel Lake. “In my opinion, they probably could have won this game. Luckily, we had the last up (to bat).”<\/p>\n
Elsewhere<\/strong><\/p>\n Earlier in the tournament, Auburn defeated FME\/Steel Lake 17-3 on Tuesday in a battle of unbeatens.<\/p>\n Tai Dumakilewe and Emilio Feliciano launched home runs and Landen Richards belted a grand slam for Auburn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kent survives elimination game, plays for District 10 championship against rival Auburn on Saturday <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":35664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-35653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35653"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=35653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}