Reno High School didn't do anything fancy on its way to winning the Northern 4A baseball regular season championship. The Huskies simply played solid baseball, as they showed in an 8-2 zone tournament victory against Douglas on Saturday morning.
Adam Colton scattered five hits over six innings and the Huskies (26-3) played errorless defense in the field on their way to a spot in the tournament's winners bracket final, which will be against Carson on Thursday night at 7 p.m.
"Reno is just a very good ballclub," Douglas coach Fred Bendure said. "They don't make any mistakes you can take advantage of, that's the thing about Reno. They're just real solid."
Reno went up 1-0 in the first inning when Marc Kaiser hit a first-pitch home run off the scoreboard in left-center. The Huskies took advantage on a Douglas error and run-scoring singles by Tom Taber and Colton, then Kyle Ryckebosch doubled two more runs home before scoring on a wild pitch to make it 6-0 in the third.
Douglas scored both of its runs in the fourth when freshman Austin Graham cranked a two-run homer over the left-center field fence.
"We just didn't come back like we thought we would," Bendure said. "We didn't hit the ball well enough to win. We thought we would hit the ball a lot better, and we can. We just didn't do it."
SPARKS 3, MCQUEEN 0
The Railroaders remained alive in the tournament as they scored once in the sixth inning and twice in the seventh to support the two-hit pitching of Chris Barton.
John Dyer broke up a scoreless tie in the sixth when he stole third base and came home on an overthrow. Nick Pavlakis supplied some insurance with a two-run single in the seventh.
Barton walked five and struck out six as sixth-seeded Sparks earned the right to play Douglas on Monday night and eliminated the No. 3 seeded Lancers.