The Durango High School baseball team returned to its winning ways on Saturday afternoon, using its depth on the mound and the batter’s box to cruise to a 10-4 victory over Conifer in the first round of the 4A Region 3 regional at DHS.
Palisade beat Durango twice at home the previous weekend for the Demons’ first home losses of the season. Therefore, the Demons looked focused to start when they scored four unanswered runs in the first inning to take control of Conifer. Seven Demons had hits and four pitched as the Lobos never had a chance to make it a game with numerous poor throws and pitches.
Senior Dawson McInnes’ two-run homer was the exclamation point of the victory for the No. 3-seeded Demons as they moved on to face No. 19 Cheyenne Mountain later in the day.
“We just stuck with our aggressive plan, and it paid off,” Durango head coach Masen Hibbeler said. “That’s pretty much what went on throughout the whole game, and we were in control of the whole thing.”
Durango improved to 17-7 overall, and No. 30 Conifer finished its season 13-11 overall. The Demons outhit the Lobos, 10-6, and Durango was led by junior Coen Anderson, senior Ollie Peterson and senior Dawson McInnes, each going 2-3 at bat.
On the mound, Anderson started and pitched five innings, finishing with seven strikeouts, three runs and two hits.
Durango started the game with a fast top of the first inning, with two pop flies and an easy out.
Senior Dylan Burns nearly hit a home run on the third pitch he saw to start the bottom of the first and reached third base. Conifer’s catcher was unable to handle a pitch, which let Burns get home and put Durango up 1-0.
Durango was opportunistic with its stealing off poor pitches and catches by the Conifer catcher. Senior Brady Hoerl hit a beautiful ball that curved away from the left fielder but stayed inside the third baseline to stay fair. This brought senior Cooper Mitchell home and advanced Romero to third off Hoerl’s triple. Conifer’s pitching woes continued, and the Lobos’ catcher couldn’t control a pitch, allowing Romero to get home for a 4-0 lead. Conifer struck out the final two batters to end the inning.
The Lobos were seeing Anderson’s pitches pretty well to start the second inning. Anderson wasn’t finding the zone as much, and Durango’s fielding wasn’t as sharp, letting some balls get through the gaps. Conifer made Durango pay with a run and got a runner to third before Anderson found his mojo and struck out the final batter to go into the bottom of the second up 4-1.
Conifer got a runner to first via walk and a runner to third via a pitch in the dirt by Anderson. After a mound visit, Anderson put one in the dirt again, allowing the Conifer runner on third to get home. He walked another batter, but found his composure to finish the inning with a strikeout with Durango up 4-2.
Durango’s bats woke up from a brief slumber at the bottom of the third. Senior Landin “Bubba” Padilla cranked one to the center field fence for a double, and Anderson smashed one at the third baseman, who couldn’t handle it, for a single. Romero’s hit into deep center field was caught, but allowed Padilla to come home after tagging up. A pitch thrown into the dirt allowed Mitchell, who was running for Anderson, to get home to increase the Durango lead to 6-2 going into the fourth.
Anderson really looked warmed up at the top of the fourth, finishing the inning with three strikeouts. Durango continued to take advantage of some poor throws and pitches by the Lobos. Sophomore Cole Clark stole two bases to get to third. Burns hit one short to bring Clark home. Burns then stole from second to third, and Conifer’s catcher’s throw was inaccurate, allowing Burns to get all the way home. Durango led 8-2 going into the fifth.
The Demons made a pitching change at the top of the sixth, going from Anderson to Mitchell. Mitchell allowed a hit and a run, but Conifer grounded out twice to end the top of the sixth. Conifer also switched its pitcher at the bottom of the sixth. Lobos’ Garrett Plomondon was throwing some junk, and Durango got a few hits off him, including a two-run homer from McInnes to increase Durango’s lead to 10-3 going into the seventh.
“We’ve done well,” Hibbeler said about facing off-speed pitchers. “We’ve worked on it. We’ve tuned up for it this week. We have a JV arm that is very similar to the arm we’ve faced today. So we got to see basically a full game of that in practice this week.”
Junior Jakob Maycock finished up the game to start the seventh. He had a great pickoff to first to get the Demons’ second out. Maycock wasn’t finding the strike zone a ton, got the bases loaded off a walk, and senior Sam Clark replaced him. A Lobo hit one through the gap to bring a runner home, but the Demons got the out they needed to finish the game.
“The first game allowed us to see some arms at the end of the game if our first two guys that we plan on going get into trouble,” Hibbeler said. “So now we know what we have, how they’re feeling today, and how they’re doing up there if we need to use them.”
Durango moved on to play Cheyenne Mountain later on Saturday at DHS. A recap of that game is coming soon.