{"id":120294,"date":"2014-05-11T01:05:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T07:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bears-advance-to-regionals\/"},"modified":"2014-05-11T01:05:49","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T07:05:49","slug":"bears-advance-to-regionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bears-advance-to-regionals\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears advance to regionals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sam
Sam Green\/Dolores Star<br><br>Kellen Gatzke makes a diving stop at shortstop and throws the runner out at first.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

What a weekend it was for the Dolores High School baseball team.<\/p>\n

Entering the district tournament seeded fourth, the Bears finished second overall to secure a spot in the Class 2A Regional Tournament.<\/p>\n

Bears come back to beat Meeker<\/p>\n

Opening the district tournament in Cortez against Meeker High School on May 9, the Bears came from behind late to notch a 3-2 victory.<\/p>\n

Struggling to score runs early on, the Bears received a boost from starting pitcher Stetson Hamilton, who held Meeker scoreless through five innings.<\/p>\n

Meeker broke through in the top of the sixth inning however, taking a 2-0 after a run scoring single and a wild pitch by Bears relief pitcher Kellen Gatzke.<\/p>\n

Refusing to surrender however, Dolores stormed back.<\/p>\n

After Bears center fielder Deano Valdez tripled to begin the bottom of the sixth inning, Mikeal Ford drew a walk and stole second base.<\/p>\n

A subsequent balk by Meeker\u2019s pitcher allowed Valdez to score the Bears\u2019 first run and a wild pitch later in the inning allowed Ford to come in from third.<\/p>\n

After a single and a steal by Hamilton, Kellen Gatzke belted a single to score Hamilton and give the Bears a 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n

Gatzke went on to pitch a scoreless top of the seventh inning to secure the victory.<\/p>\n

Discussing his team\u2019s win, Bears first baseman Evan Moore spoke at length about his team\u2019s no-quite attitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe confidence we have from having so many late inning comebacks (this season) really helps us out,\u201d said Moore.<\/p>\n

Bears upset Hotchkiss<\/p>\n

Playing against Hotchkiss in the second round of the district tournament on May 10, the Bears rode the strong arm of Kellen Gatzke to a 6-2 victory.<\/p>\n

The Dolores victory was especially impressive in light of the fact that Hotchkiss entered the game with a 16-3 overall record.<\/p>\n

In no way intimated by their tough opponents, the Bears scored two runs in the first inning after Gatzke singled in Ford and Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Over the next six-plus innings, Gatzke was spectacular on the mound, mixing fastballs and curves to keep hitters off balance.<\/p>\n

Although Gatzke allowed one run in the bottom of the second inning, the Bears responded with three runs in the top of the third to pull ahead 5-1.<\/p>\n

Two of those runs came thanks a hard hit single by Evan Moore, which scored Gatzke and Ethen.<\/p>\n

After Dolores scored their final fun of the game in the top of the fifth inning, Gatzke shut Hotchkiss down over the final three innings to secure the victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been able to rest and focus on pitching a lot,\u201d said Gatzke.<\/p>\n

Although Dolores fell 16-1 to Nucla in the district championship game, the Bears advanced to regionals nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Regionals) will be a new experience for a lot of us,\u201d said Gatzke. \u201cI\u2019ve never been there before. Our goal is to play hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolores will begin the Class 2A regional in Pueblo on May 16 with a matchup against top-seed Resurrection Christian High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dolores High School baseball team finishes second in district tournament<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":120295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6362],"tags":[188],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-120294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-sports","tag-dolores-star"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120294"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=120294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}