Galena baseball rolls to victory

If Galena coach Gary McNamara was told before the season that his young team would be one win away from playing for the Northern 4A title, he wouldn't have believed it.

But after a winning streak that has now reached 16 games, McNamara believes his team is capable of anything. Galena rolled to a 10-0 win over Reed on Thursday at Reno High in the Northern 4A playoffs.

The Grizzlies will play at 6 p.m. today at Reno where they will wait for the winner between Reed and Reno. With one more win, Galena will advance to Saturday's 3 p.m. championship game at Reno.

"The start of the year, absolutely not," said McNamara about his team doing as well as it has. "The way we've played the last few weeks, nothing surprises me. They have exceeded all expecatations.

"We're just going to ride this as long as we can. We played really well. I was actually extremely pleased."

Tony Thompson pitched a four-hit shutout in a game that was called after six innings. Thompson also had three hits and three RBI.

Galena took a 1-0 lead on Thompson's two-out RBI single in the first inning. "We got some key two-out hits," McNamara said.

"We just took advantage of a lot of situations. It might have been one of the better games we've played all year, really. We did a really good job."

A key moment with the game still in doubt came in the fourth when Thompson worked out of a bases-loaded, one out jam. Thompson also had a two-run double in the fourth.

Galena broke the game open with five runs in the fifth. Among the key hits in the rally were Andrew Ferguson's single, Thompson's double and Jordan Arnold's two-run single.

The game was called in the sixth after Arnold's RBI single made it 10-0. Arnold had four RBI and Eric Maupin had two hits and two RBI for Galena, which banged out 10 hits.