Loboes Suffer First Loss of the Season
    By Jessica Ray, Staff Writer ~~ The Monahans News, March 2, 2007

The Monahans baseball team hosted Alpine Tuesday night in their first loss of the season.  The Bucks went home with an 11-4 victory over the Loboes.

In the first inning, Monahans had a 2-0 lead after a home-run from Tico Olivas, which was good for two runs.  After the first inning, however, Monahans had a hard time staying in the game and keeping Alpine at bay.

"This type of game is why managers get gray hairs in the big leagues," said Coach Arcadio Rivera.  "Dominique (Estorga) pitched well, but defensively we did not play well behind him.  We made 11 fielding / throwing errors.  That's not counting the mental errors we made."

Although Alpine didn't score any runs in the first inning, they scored twice again in the fourth inning.  Monahans scored a run in the second inning.  A fifth-inning run for Alpine made the score 5-3 going into the sixth.  The sixth inning got ugly for the Loboes.

"As bad as we played, we were still in the game in the bottom of the fifth where we loaded the bases, but hit into a triple play which got Alpine out of a big jam and deflated us.  After that, the wheels fell off, and we allowed Alpine to get six runs in the sixth inning with the help of passed balls, walks, fielding and throwing errors," said Coach Arcadio Rivera of the six sixth-inning Alpine runs, which helped the Bucks to an 11-4 lead over Monahans.

The Loboes are now preparing for the Sandhills Tournament.

"We are going back to the basics today to try to regroup before we play in our Sandhills Tournament this weekend," said Rivera.

The first Sandhills Tournament game for the Loboes is against Brownfield at 4:15 pm on Thursday.

Keyed by Chance Helmers, Junior