THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
El Dorado High School Athletics

GREENWOOD — The Greenwood Bulldogs rolled into the 6A-West district championship game with their 20th straight win. Connor Noland cruised on the mound, and the Bulldogs scored plenty behind him in a 10-0 win shortened to six innings via the Sportsmanship Rule against El Dorado on Tuesday and wrapped up a first-round bye in the Class 6A state tournament. Greenwood (28-3) will play on Saturday in the district championship game at Sheridan, the top seed in the district tournament. Both teams will received first-round byes in the state tournament and be on opposite sides of the state tournament bracket. They will play second-round games on May 12. Tuesday, Jackson Webb and Cooper Passmore opened Greenwood’s half of the opening inning with walks on four straight balls each. Peyton Holt reached on a fielder’s choice and when the throw sailed over the first baseman, Webb came on around to score the game’s first run. “They had a big error early,” Greenwood head coach Trey Holloway said. “If they get out there, we don’t get all of those runs early probably. We got to take advantage of that, and we did a good job of that.” Connor Noland took one in the shoulder, and Holt and Noland stole bases before Brandon Woolsey singled sharply up the middle to score both Holt and courtesy runner Jayden Jasna for a 3-0 lead. Colton Sagely followed with a double that clanged off the metal fence, sending Woolsey to third. Landry Jurecka made it 5-0 with a base hit that scored both runners. “When we score two, three, four runs in the first inning we feel confident that we have a good chance with Connor on the mound,” Holloway said. “The big thing is to start off and get the gas pedal down and get is started. We’ve done a pretty good job the last couple of games of getting runs in the first inning. We kind of shocked them a little bit. They had guys warming up and getting ready in the first inning.” That was plenty for Noland, who cruised to his eighth win of the season with no defeats. Noland went the distance, needing just 72 pitches to complete six innings with 12 strikeouts. He struck out three straight twice, spanning innings, and whiffed the final five Wildcats he faced. El Dorado (19-8) managed two hits off Noland with a one-out single by Brennan Smith in the second inning and one-out double by Chase Webb. Noland stranded them both. “The first time we face them, I called first-pitch fastballs almost every single time,” Holloway said. “Today, we did a lot of breaking balls first pitch. That’s the great thing about Connor is that we can do multiple things with him. He’s good enough to be able to spot it up breaking ball whether it’s a curveball or it’s a slider or a change-up or a fastball. He can throw a strike pretty much any count. That gives us a huge advantage.” Greenwood beat El Dorado, 6-0, in March in a nonconference game at Hendrix with Noland striking out 12 and allowing just one hit. Tuesday, Greenwood added a run in the third inning on Jurecka’s double that scored Sagely, who reached on an infield single. The Bulldogs added three runs in the fifth inning on consecutive singles by Jackson Webb, Cooper Passmore and Holt after Sagely singled and back-to-back walks to Jurecka and Jake Smith. Greenwood ended it in the sixth with a quick run. Noland walked to lead off the inning, Woolsey was hit by a pitch, and Sagely finished off a 4-for-4 day at the plate with a double into the corner that scored Jasna, the courtesy runner, easily.

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
El Dorado High School Athletics

BULLDOGS MAKE QUICK WORK OF EL DORADO WILDCATS

LELAND BARCLAY

Times Record | 5/2/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Shaffer