Green River Baseball Competes at State

By EUGENE SWALBERG Guest Writer

Green River vs Panguitch-1A State Championships quarterfinal game
It was a beautiful fall day in Spanish Fork for the first round of the State Championship games in 1A baseball. Green River was to play Panguitch for a chance to play later on in the week. The team was excited and ready. Their entire season came down to this one game. Lose and go home, win and play on. It doesn’t get any better.
Green River took to the bats first and after two quick outs, Brennan Bigelow was able to get on base with a double and Jason Johnson made it to first on an error, scoring Brennan. Panguitch got up and made two quick scores. Green River made one additional score at the top of the second but Panguitch made two more scores making it a 4 – 2 ball game.
Good pitching and good defense from each team saw the next two innings go scoreless which fueled the excitement of the game. At the top of the fifth inning, Hayden Pfander took one for the team and got on first base while Justin Johnson hit shallow over third base. Sarah Swalberg hit into the in field but advanced the two base runners. Brennan Bigelow got up and hit it hard down the third base line. The third baseman fielded it cleanly but overthrew it to first, allowing Bigelow to make it to second and the two base runners to score.
Now we’ve got a game. Half way through the fifth inning and the score is knotted at four each as Green River takes to the field. There is excitement in the air. The Pirates are pumped and the Panguitch Bobcats are wondering what happened. They were supposed to come in and take it to Green River?
The excitement was short lived as Panguitch finished out the inning with three more runs. Green River couldn’t get the bats going like they needed to and were blanked the next two innings while Panguitch padded the score with two more runs.
The bottom half of the seventh inning wasn’t played and the Green River Pirates took to home plate with their bubble having been burst. They came believing they could beat a team that earlier had beat them by a score of 3 – 0. They were confident but not over confident. For them to win, they would have to play excellent defense have great pitching and hit the ball like they knew they could. This young and seasoned team did all three – just not all game long.
The Pirates graduate two seniors in Brennan Bigelow and Tyson Johnson – hard shoes to fill but with a younger class poised and ready to step up and ‘play ball’.