AURORA — It went from low-scoring to a laugher to a near-blown opportunity down the stretch of the regular season in biting cold.
Welcome to life at the top of the Centennial League in 2016. Grandview overcame an early deficit, threatened to win by the 10-run rule, then had to hang on to defeat host Cherokee Trail 13-10 on Tuesday.
The Wolves moved to 11-2 overall, 8-0 in league, after fighting off the Cougars (8-4, 7-2). Said Wolves coach Scott Henry: “Anytime you’re on top of this league … It’s tough. It’s a grind.”
The Wolves are tied with Mullen for the league lead with three more games on tap this week. Grandview and Mullen meet twice next week.
Cherokee Trail grabbed a 3-1 lead early only to have the Wolves plate 12 combined runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. They were aided by eight Cougars walks as well as three wild pitches, two errors and a hit batter as every Grandview starter but two scored. Plus, the Wolves were motoring behind starter Cade Crader, who settled in after a 30-pitch first inning and allowed only two hits from the second through the fifth to get the win.
However, Cherokee Trail got to two Wolves relievers and made it nail-biting, even bringing the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning.
A bang-bang play at first base ended it.
“(The Cougars) are a good hitting team, and they weren’t hitting groundballs early; they were hitting line drives,” Crader said. “But you learn to walk around it and keep them off-balance. It helps out a lot when you get runs like we did.”
Grandview100 543 0 — 13 9 1
Cherokee Trail300 003 4 — 10 13 4
Grandview — Sundine rf 4-2-2-0, Smith ss-p 4-1-2-1, Coverly 3b-p 4-2-1-1, Hays c 3-1-0-1, Parker cf 5-0-1-2, Crader p 4-0-1-0, Lamphere cr-ph 0-1-0-0, Bowers 1b 4-1-2-0, Gipson lf 1-2-0-0, McLaran 2b 2-3-0-0, Sullivan 3b 1-0-0-0, League ss 0-0-0-0. Totals 32-13-9-5.
Cherokee Trail — Cox lf-p 5-1-3-1, Nantkes p-lf 4-0-2-0, Bohannon cr 0-1-0-0, Dornan lf 1-0-0-0, Perez 3b 1-2-0-0, Sullivan 1b 4-1-2-2, Morris ss 4-2-2-0, Meraz rf 4-2-2-2, Lynch dh 4-1-2-1, Zambrano c 0-0-0-0, Mayrose cr 0-0-0-0, Osley 2b 2-0-0-2, Smith cf 3-0-0-1, MacKintosh p 0-0-0-0. Totals 32-10-13-9
E — Meraz, Osley, Nantkes, Morris, McLaran. DP — Cherokee Trail 2, Grandview 2. LOB — Grandview 8, Cherokee Trail 6. 2B — Cox 2, Sullivan.
Batteries — Crader, Coverly (6), Smith (7) and Hays; Nantkes, MacKintosh (4), Cox (6) and Zambrano. W — Crader. L — Nantkes. HBP — SF — T —
Neil H. Devlin: @neildevlin or ndevlin@denverpost.com
