The Mt. Zion baseball team clinched the outright Apollo Conference championship on Monday afternoon. The Braves defeated Mattoon 4-1 in the first game of the doubleheader.
Mt. Zion jumped on top early. Jonah Smith singled and later came around to score on a Mattoon error.
The scored stayed 1-0 Braves until the bottom of the third. With two outs, Mattoon’s Will Courtney and Garrette Branson worked bases on balls. Peyton Morrow came up with a run-scoring double to left-center. The game was tied 1-1 after three.
Trevor Durand for Mt. Zion and Sawyer Scott for Mattoon matched zeros on the mound until the sixth inning of play. Andrew Auton drew a lead-off walk for the Braves. He went to second on a wild pitch and advanced to third on a productive ground ball out by A.J. Davis to the right side of the infield. Dawson Johns connected on an RBI-single to break the tie and give Mt. Zion a 2-1 lead.
The Braves added a pair of insurance runs in the seventh inning. With two runners on and two outs in the inning, Johns came through again for Mt. Zion. His base hit to left field scored Riley Reynolds to make it 3-1. On the play, the trail runner, Auton, was trying for third base. The throw there was wild allowing Auton to come home. The Mt. Zion lead was 4-1.
Durand went back to the hill and completed the conference-clinching victory for the Braves. He went seven innings, allowed four hits, two walks, and struck out seven. Scott also went the distance for the Green Wave. He allowed four runs (one earned) on seven hits with three walks and three strikeouts.
The Braves scored four runs on seven hits. They committed one error and stranded seven men on base. The Green Wave finished with one run on four hits. They committed three errors and stranded six runners.
With the victory, Mt. Zion improved to 19-4 on the season, 8-1 in the Apollo Conference. Mattoon dropped to 14-10 overall, 4-5 in conference play.
The game is available on-demand here at myradiolink.com, powered by the Fellowship Center.
