By TYLER HENRY
Lead Sportswriter - Salina Post
The Southeast of Saline and Sacred Heart baseball teams played in a pivotal league doubleheader on Monday and split the set with the Knights winning game one 4-3 in walk-off fashion, and the Trojans holding on to win game two by the same score.
Game One: Sacred Heart 4, SE of Saline 3
The opener was a true back-and-forth affair that saw Southeast strike first on a Sam Knopf RBI single in the first and add to the lead with an RBI knock from Tysen Keller in the third.
That lead would be short-lived as the Knights responded with two runs of their own in the fourth on a pair of RBI groundouts.
In the sixth, Sacred Heart would put the Trojans down to their final three outs with a pair of doubles from Luke Koland and Maddox Wells, but Southeast stayed alive in the seventh on a mad dash to the plate that scored Ian Nickelson on a passed ball.
Looking to avoid extra innings, the Knights got to work in the home half of the seventh, and after recording two outs, Graham Armstrong reached on a walk, advanced on a Luke Koland single, and came in to score the decisive run on a Maddox Wells walk-off single.
Wells and Armstrong were also the two pitchers of record in this game, combining to toss seven innings and allowing just three runs on seven hits.
Game Two: SE of Saline 4, Sacred Heart 3
The Trojans got off to a much better start in game two, rattling off four runs on six hits in the top of the second inning.
Unfortunately for Southeast, those would be their last hits of the game, and the Trojans would need to rely on pitching and defense to win the day.
Little by little, the Knights came back in this game, scoring three runs without the aid of a single RBI, thanks to good sacrifice bunts and a pair of wild pitches.
A run in the second, another in the fourth and one more in the fifth would make this a 4-3 game, but that was all the closer the Knights would get as Tiernan Ptacek slammed the door shut in the final two frames.
Ptacek went the distance in this game, tossing seven innings and allowing just three runs on five hits, walking just one batter while fanning five.
With this split, SES improves to 6-4 on the year and 3-1 in league play, while Sacred Heart moves to 5-4 and 4-2 respectively.
SES will be on the road this Thursday to take on the 5-3 Irish of Chapman, while Sacred Heart returns to Salina to face Republic County.