Sports Today: Douglas baseball blasts Merced

The Douglas baseball team got off to a strong start in the Atwater Easter Invitational Monday, taking a 10-0 win over Merced in six innings.

Tyler Hoelzen, who was making his first varsity start after being called up from junior varsity for the week, pitched a complete-game one-hit shutout with six strikeouts and four walks to pick up the win.

On the offensive side, Niko Saladis and Tyler May each drove in two runs and Phil Mannelly, Cory Eilers and Wyatt Graham each doubled.

Mannelly, Ryan Pruitt, Willie Morgan and May each collected two hits as Douglas outhit Merced 12-1.

Eilers, Graham and Brandon Bernard each drove in one run as Douglas improved to 16-4 on the year.

On Saturday, the Tigers swept a doubleheader from Wooster, improving to 11-1 in Sierra League play and 7-0 at home on the year.

Graham picked up the win on the mound in an 11-2 game one, improving to 4-1 on the season.

Senior Nate Whalin picked up the win in game two, an 11-1 victory, running his record to 3-1 on the year.

Even with a roster depleted by spring break vacations, the Douglas High girls' track team put on an impressive show at the Fallon Elks Invitational Saturday in Churchill County.

The Tigers took third in a field that featured every Northern 4A school and most of the top Northern 3A schools, coming in behind Reno and Elko.

"Shorthanded is not the word," Douglas coach RIck Brown said. "We only had four girls who scored points, and we still took third. It was basically the story of the little team that could."

Skylar Young took second in the 400 and Nicole Mehrer took third to lead off the scoring for the Tigers and Mehrer took second in the triple jump, followed by Jessica Gorton in third.

Alicia Sturgess took second in the high jump and second in the 800 and all four team to blow away the 4x400 relay field, winning the event by nearly three seconds.

"That was a strong race for the girls and Jessica Gorton ran a very strong home stretch on the third leg into a pretty stiff headwind, so that was big," Brown said.

The boys' team took 10th overall with Tyler Tinstman taking third in the 100. Reno, Hug and Dayton took the top three places at the meet.

Tinstman ran an 11.38 in the event, just behind the 11.28 winning time and the 11.37 second-place finisher.

"That was Tyler's first time out running the 100 this season," Brown said. "He was very strong and he was right in there with the top three. You could have thrown a blanket over them at the end of the race and caught all three of them."

The Tigers' 4x100 team of Michael Banks, Julius Bailey, Will Sheerin and Tinstman took second behind Hug, finishing under one second behind.

"That was a case of a bobbled handoff making the difference in the race," Brown said. "We made two great exchanges and just had a miscommunication on the handoff into the anchor leg. When you don't have a track that you can work on, you can't really work on the handoffs so well."

Douglas heads to the Reed Rotary Invitational this week, which will draw 1,700 athletes.

"It should be a fun meet," Brown said. "We'll have a lot more athletes back, so we'll see how it goes."