Independence — The Yamhill-Carlton Tigers continued tearing through the 2019 JBO Senior National State Championship on Saturday afternoon at Central High School in Independence, where they have put up some monster numbers and performances thus far on the weekend. All of these performances have put the Tigers in position to take home the state championship on Sunday.
In their opening game Friday morning, the Tigers hammered Sweet Home 12-1 to advance to play Putnam in the quarterfinals, and Yamhill-Carlton erupted for 22 runs to scorch Putnam 22-7 and advance to the state semifinals on Saturday afternoon against familiar foe McMinnville, who defeated West Linn 8-1 and Clackamas 15-5 to advance to Saturday’s semifinal game. The loser of this one will be playing in an elimination game on Sunday morning against the winner of the Clackamas-West Linn elimination.
Yamhill-Carlton jumped on McMinnville from the start, putting up five runs in the first inning to have a 5-0 lead after an inning. After the Grizzlies got on the board in the top of the second, Yamhill-Carlton responded by extending their lead, taking advantage of wild pitching from McMinnville and the Tigers would finish them off in the fifth inning by mercy rule 14-4. With the victory, Yamhill-Carlton will play in a Best of 3 championship series on Sunday, while McMinnville is delegated to an elimination game against either West Linn or Clackamas Sunday morning.
Yamhill-Carlton Head Coach Wayne Looney discussed the key to winning a state championship on Sunday, “I’ve got a feeling we’ll end up playing McMinnville again, we’ve played them five times this year, we know each other very well and they always play well in the tournaments. Anything can happen so I go out and tell our boys to go out and do the fundamentals, it all falls into place.”
