Dayton baseball defeats ROP

After playing in a wind tunnel on Tuesday, the Dayton High baseball team was glad to return to normal conditions on Wednesday.

Dayton erupted for eight runs in the fifth inning to break it open in a 12-1 win over Rite of Passage at ROP. The Dust Devils were coming off a 24-13 win at Damonte Ranch in extremely windy conditions on Tuesday.

"If you hit the ball to right field it ended up in left field," said Dayton coach Craig Millera bout the conditions at Damonte Ranch.

"This was a whole lot better for us even though we started kind of sluggish. We played better."

Dayton (6-1, 4-1 in the Northern 3A) has a key Northern 3A doubleheader on Saturday at home against Truckee, beginning at noon.

Against ROP, Dayton collected seven of its 17 hits in its eight-run fifth. "All of a sudden we went on a hitting terror," Miller said.

Danny Hopper and freshman Travis Wood each had three hits, Casey Skog, Andrew Rice, Matt Bowman and Tim Torres all had two hits and Tom O'Brien, Adam Diament and Justin Cross each added a hit. Hopper had two triples and three RBI.

Diament was the winning pitcher, allowing one run over the first three innings. Wood finished up, not allowing a run or hit over the last two innings in the game that was called after five innings due to the 10-run rule.