SMHS BASEBALL
For the first time this season, the Rattlers were back home in San Marcos playing their first home games of the season at the SMHS Tournament.
While the Rattlers were focused on adding more victories to the win column, Head Coach Bryan Webb also wanted an emphasis on finding roster depth.
“All the weekend, our whole focus was to get depth and find our guys,” Webb said. “I told them a couple times that some of you guys are getting the opportunity to prove your worth and value up here. If somebody were to go down, we can’t miss a beat. We just have to keep moving.”
Bringing up many players from the junior varsity level, Webb started to see his players improve and win games as the Rattlers finished the tournament with a 3-1-1 overall record.
“I saw a lot of good depth starting to build what we need,” Webb said. “Our JV guys got a lot of JV reps and they were here. Overall the program is just building, getting stronger and stronger.
“They’re not allowed to be [called] young anymore.
They’re all varisty guys, but in order for us to go where we want to go, we’ve got to continue to get better every single day. I saw them get better and win games when we didn’t really feel good that day.”
After tying rival Seguin 3-3 in their first game of the tournament, the Rattlers bounced back to beat Arlington Sam Houston 7-6 following a walk-off double from Charlie Helgeson in the bottom of the fifth inning. Helegeson also closed out the top of the fifth inning, allowing just one hit, no runs, no walks and throwing one strikeout to earn the win. I was just looking to go up the middle the other way,” Helgeson said on his game-winning RBI double. “[Just] looking to get an inside fastball down and in. Then [finding] sweet spot and have the wind blowing out a little bit to get over the left fielder’s head.”
Returning to play on Friday, the Rattlers battled the Harker Heights Knights.
In a true pitcher’s duel, San Marcos defeated the Knights 3-1 with sophomore pitcher Andrew Wilson earning the win, throwing 6.1 innings, allowing five hits, no earned runs, one walk and striking out eight batters.
While Wilson dominated on the mound, the sophomore pitcher gave credit to his defense for backing him up.
“It was a pretty good game defensively,” Wilson said. “I had the guys behind me. The strikeouts were nice, but at the end of the day, it was the defensive stops that helped us get through the game and not allow many runs.”
Finishing up the tournament on Saturday, the Rattlers fell to the Boerne Greyhounds 9-6, San Marcos bounced back to beat Sam Houston again 5-4 in walkoff fashion as Ronaldo Mendez-Soto scored from third base on a wild pitch.
Sophomore pitcher Elijah Ramirez earned the win for the Rattlers, coming in top of the fourth and fifth innings, allowing just one hit, no earned runs, no walk and striking out one batter.
Coming off the loss to Boerne, the key for Ramirez in the win against Sam Houston was being able to refocus.
“lt starts off with our coach,” Ramirez said. “Preparing us for this game and telling us how to get prepared and everything. It was really big to just calm our minds down and just refocus for this game.”
Despite not everything going the Rattlers way, Webb talked about the importance of playing against the ups and downs of the game.
“[It’s about] handling adversity,” Webb said. “That’s what we talk about. It’s not always gonna be good, it’s not always going to be bad when you strike out [but] it’s not the end of the world. We just have to be able to handle adversity when it strikes and it hit us a bunch of times this week “I like the situations that we were put in and we learned a baseball game. [There were] a lot of situations that we have to get better [at]. We’re going to get better as coaches, better as players, our pitchers have got to get better. Overall, there was a lot of learning, coaching and teaching.”
San Marcos returns to play Tuesday in a district showdown with the Clemens Buffaloes. The Buffaloes enter the game with a 12-3 overall record and a 1-0 district record.
First pitch is set for 7 p.m.
cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc
