Prairie splits on opening day of Lewiston tourney

LEWISTON - Darnell Metcalf hit a two-run single in the third inning to lift the Prairie Cardinals past the Yakima Beetles 3-2 in the opening game of the Josh Burton Memorial Tournament at Harris Field on Thursday.

Kostas Garcia went the distance to earn the win for Prairie.

"He threw a lot of strikes and got a lot of ground balls," Prairie coach Dustin Frank said. "They really didn't hit Kostas hard - he just threw a lot of strikes and it was the key to the ballgame. We need to be able to do that to win ballgames."

Derek Tymesen had two hits and a run scored for the Cardinals (11-20).

In their second game of the day, the Cardinals allowed 13 runs in the third and fourth innings to fall 14-5 to the Billings Red Scarlets to move to 1-1 in pool play.

"We came out really well in the second inning and got up 3-0," Frank said. "But that (six-run third) inning ended up costing us. Things started to happen and the gates opened. Billings hit the ball really well and were finding the holes."

Metcalf had two hits for Prairie, which faces Coeur d'Alene today at 10 a.m.

PRAIRIE 3, YAKIMA 2

Prairie 002 010 0 - 3 5 4

Yakima 001 010 0 - 2 6 3

Kostas Garcia and Cody VanDuyne; Tim Roddy and Justin Reyes. W - Garcia (3-3). L - Roddy.

HITS: Pra - Tymesen 2, Greiser, Vandever, Metcalf. Yak - Koyatch 2, Scott, Roybal 2, McClurkin, Lybeck. 2B - Roybal.

BILLINGS 14, PRAIRIE 5

Billings 006 710 0 - 14 16 0

Prairie 030 200 0 - 5 7 3

Justin Black and Nick Funyak; Nick Leva, Tony Davidson (4), Tyler Burnett (5) and Cody VanDuyne. W - Black. L - Leva (1-2).

HITS: Bill - MacDonald, Gilmore, Muller, Tolstedt 4, Black 3, Schrotenboer 2, Funyak, Compton, Huppert 2. Pra - Greiser, Vandever, Metcalf 2, Smith, VanDuyne. 2B - Compton, Metcalf. 3B - Muller. HR - Black.

Lewis-Clark 13

Coeur d'Alene 3

LEWISTON - The Lewis-Clark Twins defeated the Coeur d'Alene Lumbermen in five innings in their opening game of the Josh Burton Memorial tournament at Harris Field.

"Lewiston showed up to play today," Coeur d'Alene assistant coach Nic Duman said. "They hit the ball really well today and our guys weren't there today. Hopefully, they will be tomorrow."

Austin Kiefer tripled for Coeur d'Alene (14-18), which faces Prairie today at 10 a.m. and Billings at 1 p.m. at Harris Field.