Helper American Legion team leads the league

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Last week Helper added a pair of wins to their record with a 11-3 win over Murray at home. They also beat East 11-3 and Taylorsville 14-5 to take their league record to 5-0 on the season.
On June 15, Helper played Murray at home and won 11-3. Dylan Vogrinec started on the mound and pitched five solid innings. Jaren McCourt came in in relief for the final two innings.
Bradon Bolotas had a double and a single. Keny Seals had a double and a homer. Daniel Peczuh added a couple singles.
“Overall we played a good game and everyone got a chance to play and contribute.” commented Coach Jeff Cisneros.
On Wednesday they traveled to Hunter, but were only able to play two complete innings before the rain postponed the game Helper led 10-0 after two. They will finish the game up at a later date.
Then Helper headed back SLC to play East and get their second 11-3 in a week.. Hayden Basinger threw five solid innings. Gage Bigelow came in for the final two.
Cisneros summed up the game, “We started out slow but picked up our intensity and finally put East away. Kash Jewkes, Peczuh and Seals all had multiple hits. We played very solid on defense and this was good win for us. The win puts us at 4-0 league play and tied for first with Taylorsville.”
Helper grabbed the top spot in the league with a win over Taylorsville on Monday night. That game was between the only two undefeated team in the league.
Taylorsville started off with a pair of runs to open it up. Helper countered by cutting the lead in half when Basinger went deep as the lead off batter. Taylorsville put up two more with a homer in the second. But it was the third inning when Helper torched the starting pitcher for Taylorsville with eight runs and knocked him out of the game. They never looked back. The final score ended up 14-5 in favor of Helper.
Bolotas pitched the entire game. He was backed up with some pretty good defense, but the story of the night was Helper’s hitting.
They ended up with 16 hits on the night. Basinger had a double and a homerun. Tamllos had a double and two singles, Jewkes had a double and a single, Peczuh had a double, Rich had a double and a single and Josh Dension had a double and a single.
Cisneros was pleased, “When you hit like that you are going to win a lot of games. This was a great win against a team that is known for their baseball. The win puts us at 5-0 in the league and in first place by ourselves.”
“Overall it was a good week, we had good pitching, we played good defense and we swung a pretty good bat.Everyone is getting some time and it seems like we are constantly getting better.” stated Cisneros. Helper American Legion took third in the Helper tournament. Coach Jeff Cisneros said, “On June 23 we played Granger at home. This was a league game and we won 10-3. Josh Denison started on the mound and was relieved by Dylan Vogrinec. Josh struggled a bit and a lot of that was due to the fact that he had not pitched for a week or two. Dylan came in and did a nice job and got the win. Our bats started off very slow but we started to pick it up in the third inning. We scored four runs in the third and six more in the fourth. We had the bases loaded in the fifth and sixth innings but did not score. Kash Jewkes and Beau Rich each had a pair of singles and both of them have really been hitting the ball well as of late. Keny Seals had two doubles and Daniel Peczuh had a single and a homerun. The win moved us to 6-0 in league play and got us ready to start out the tournament on Thursday.
“Thursday started our tournament. We played Kearns and beat them 6-0. This was a very well played game and Beau Rich pitched a complete game and did a great job. Beau really kept Kearns guessing all night and we played good defense behind him. Our bats were a little quiet too as the Kearns pitcher did a a great job also. Beau Rich and Daulton Nelson each had a double and we broke the game open with four runs in the seventh inning. Daniel Peczuh had a two run homerun in that inning. This was another good win against a good Kearns team that we had beaten earlier in the year by a score of 6-3. The win kicked off a pretty good weekend of games.
“Friday nights game was against Highland. This a tournament game but it also counted as a league game. The first thing about Friday was the crowd size. It was huge and I want to thank everyone who came out not only on Friday but all the days. The support we had for all of our games and the support for the Price team was great and I want to say thank you. The home crowd was treated to a game that was kind of lopsided and we beat Highland 15-1. Everyone contributed in scoring runs as we pounded out 14 hits. The biggest thing about Friday nights performance was the pitching performance of Gage Bigelow. Gage struck out 10 batters and did not allow a hit. The game was shorted by the nine run rule but still this was a no hitter and great performance by Gage. A diving catch in centerfield by Julian Tamllos helped preserve the no hitter. This was a good win and it ran our league record to 7-0. We currently sit alone in first place in the Salt Lake Valley League.
“Saturday nights game was in my opinion between the two best teams in the tournament. Utah’s Perfect Game (UPG) is a team made up of kids from Lehi, Maple Mountain, Jordan and Lone Peak High schools. They are not a American Legion team but rather a team that travels and plays in tournaments. The game however was pretty sloppy as both teams combined for 11 errors. Colter Moore started on the mound and ran into trouble in the third inning. UPG scored five times in the first three innings. Not all Colter’s fault as we failed to play very good defense for him. We committed four errors to contribute to their five runs. Bradon Bolotas came on to pitch and Clint Finkbiner closed out the game on the mound. UPG scored five more times over the next four innings and won by a score of 10-6. Even though we scored six runs our bats never really got going. We had seven hits, but they were all singles. We left the bases loaded in the third inning and again in the fifth inning. This was good team for us to play and they went on to the win the Championship of the tournament with a win over Kearns on Sunday. Playing teams like this will definitely help us prepare for the upcoming state tournament. Even though we lost there were many good things that we did and a lot of things that we learned where we can do better. The lost put us in the third and fourth place game for the tournament.
“Sundays game had us originally set up to play Western Slope Colorado but because of scheduling issues we played Cyprus. We beat Cyprus 15-6 by the nine run rule to finish in third place for the tournament. A lot of guys saw action in Sundays game and even though we had some errors and mental mistakes I was pleased with the way we came back after losing Saturday night. Cyprus is currently in third place in the SLV league and we will be playing them a league game in a couple of weeks back here in Helper. It was important for us to show them what will be waiting when they come back and I was very happy with the win. Seth Tryon had a homerun as did Colter Moore. Clint Finkbiner had a pair of singles and Kash Jewkes had a single and a double. Dylan Vogrinec started on the mound and picked up the win and Josh Denison bounced back and pitched two solid innings as well.
“Overall I was very pleased with the tournament. Again the local support was tremendous. I saw a lot of good things throughout the weekend and that included the play from the Price Legion Team. In every one of their games they showed that they can play with some of the bigger programs and really hold their own. Nico Velasquez and Anthony Montoya made the all-tournament team from Price and they really played well. Our play was good at times and bad at times, but that is baseball. We need to continue to get better and we jump back into league games this week with a game at West. Our next home game will be July 6 at 7 pm with Taylorsville U17. Daniel Peczuh and Julian Tamllos made the all-tournament team from our team and because of his pitching performance Friday night Gage Bigelow received the gold glove award. It was a good tourney and I look forward to next year,” said Coach Cisneros.