By T. Scott Boatright
After opening their District 2-5A baseball season last weekend with a pair of losses to arch-rival West Monroe, the Ruston High Bearcats were on a mission of sorts Thursday night.
It didn’t take long for the Bearcats to say mission accomplished after picking up their first district victory of the season with a 6-0 win over West Ouachita.
“They were ready to go … ready to get back out here and go after a district opponent,” said RHS coach Zack Smith about his Bearcats. “They had a bad taste in their mouth after West Monroe and were just looking forward to having another opportunity to get out here and play.”
The Bearcats used timely hitting and an overpowering performance from starting senior pitcher Reid Williams, who tossed a one-hit shutout while striking out 10 to earn the win.
“What really excited me was to see Reid out there on the bump and throwing really well,” Smith said. “He pounded the zone and threw 87 pitches over the seven innings. That’s a very good outing for him and we needed that. We need him to do that for us. We wanted someone else to step up on the mound other than JR (Tollett). We’re excited about that. We played good defense behind him, too.”
Two of the biggest defensive plays of the contest came on a pair of long ball rundowns in the fourth inning by rightfielder Dawson Szymanski, who while running back to the fence and looking over his shoulder into the sun made a pair of falling down catches, the latter coming with a baserunner on second and the Bearcats leading 1-0.
“Those were great catches at a very crucial point in the game,” Smith said. “If one of those drops, it was going to be a lot closer than it ended up. It was a very good job defensively by the whole team.”
Ruston put that first run up in the second inning as Dyson Fields led off with a single and then used his speed to reach second on a before scoring on a sacrifice fly by Wade Crawford to centerfield.
Fields led off for the Bearcats again in the fourth inning, again showcasing his speed by stretching a long hit into a triple that he finished off with a long headfirst slide into third base.
One out later, Fields made another headfirst slide into home plate off a Crawford single to push the RHS lead to 2-0.
“He’s getting better at base running,” Smith said of Fields. “He’s always had the speed, but he’s starting to come around in knowing how to run the bases. That’s very important for him to develop as a base runner because of that speed.”
Ruston added two more runs before the fourth inning was over as Crawford scored off a single by designated hitter Logan Foster, who scored off a single by Gabe Gaudet.
After Williams retired all three batters he faced in the top of the fifth, the Bearcats added two more runs in the bottom half of the inning with Szymanski and Fields both reaching base on one-out singles and then taking advantage of a pair of balks along with a fielding error by the Chiefs to push their advantage to 6-0.
Williams followed that up with another three-up, three-down inning for the Chiefs to seal the win.
