Juan Diego Catholic High School completed their quest for a second straight Utah 3-A high school baseball championship with a 5-1 victory over Canyon View High School. Relying on a strong pitching staff, Juan Diego proved untouchable throughout the recent tournament.
Our Emery High Spartan baseball team, after winning two games the weekend before in the opening rounds of state play, lost two games decisively to close out their season. Emery opened play on Thursday with a loss to Desert Hills High School of St. George in quarterfinal play. The final score was 16-8. Emery next played Bear River, a team they had defeated a week earlier, and left the tournament after a 15-3 loss to the Bears.
Colter Moore and Braden Bolotas were the two Emery pitchers in those games. With these two pitching the majority of the innings this season for a team that finished the regular season 16-5 and then went 2-2 in play-off action, The team went into the games with high hopes of doing well. Moore, even though he had pitched well for the Spartans in the past several games, was still suffering from back soreness that had given him fits for awhile.
Both of these games found Emery in contention early only then to lose the games in the late innings. Against Desert Hills, Emery only trailed 10-8 until the bottom of the fifth inning when the Thunder scored six runs to wrap up the victory. Against Bear River, Emery grabbed a 3-0 lead in the first inning. The Bears scored seven runs in the fifth inning and three more in the sixth inning to end the game and to end Emery’s season.
In the two games, Bolotas, Moore and Gage Bell each hit a double for Emery’s only extra base hits. Emery had a total of 12 hits in the Desert Hills game and four hits in the Bear River game.
In other action, Juan Diego had defeated Desert Hills in the semi-finals 11-1. This game was the next game for Desert Hills after defeating the Spartans. Canyon View High School had came up through the loser’s bracket, those teams that had a single loss in the double-loss elimination format, then defeated Desert Hills 9-5 for the right to face Juan Diego in the championship game. Canyon View had defeated Bear River in their next game after the Emery game.
This was a good season for Emery with a total of 18 victories and a share of the region championship. Emery had hit the ball well throughout the year and had received contributions from each of their starters.
Emery baseball finishes season 2-2 at state
"The Spartans line up for the National Anthem at the field in Kearns."