Saints Win Jayhawk West in Unorthodox Season

Seward County won the Jayhawk West for the eighth time in 10 years by taking three of four games in Colby this weekend. Seward shares the title with Butler who won three of four at home against Hutchinson. However, Seward is the top seed from the Jayhawk West after winning the tie breaker. Seward went 3-1 at Butler during mid March. Seward wins the conference despite going 4-20 in the non conference schedule. Seward head coach Galen McSpadden says he’ll take it. “We let our guns go on the weekends and shot our pop guns during the week,” the NJCAA Hall of Fame coach said of his teams’ strong conference and struggling non conference season. “We set a record for the worst non conference season we’ve had. We set a record for letting one team beat us five times in one year (Clarendon). We want to be the team with the worst overall record to win the JUCO World Series.” The Saint bats were singing at Colby winning Saturday 14-5 and 16-9 before an 11-1 six inning win Sunday. Colby grabbed a 5-3 win in game one Sunday. Sunday in game one, Jared Wagner’s strong starting performance was wasted. He allowed three earned runs in a complete game. Seward allowed two unearned runs against Colby in the second. Kelby Tomlinson was 3-4 in the loss. In game two Sunday, the Saints scored seven in the fourth in route to the run rule win. Quay Grant (6), Jordan Dallalio (1), Kelby Tomlinson (5), Ty Jacobs (5), and Todd Glime (9) all homered in the win. Jose Gonzalez (3-4) pitched the distance for the win with five strikeouts.

Saturday, the Saints scored 30 runs on 37 hits in the sweep. In game one, Luke Campbell homered and drove in four runs in a 3-4 game at the plate. Todd Glime homered twice. Kelby Tomlinson was 3-3 with four runs scored. Camron Maldonado (8-3) pitched four strong innings for the win. In game two Saturday, Seward used a four run fourth and a four run fifth to blow the game open. Todd Glime was 4-5 with a homer. Luke Campbell was 4-5 with his ninth homer of the season and four RBI’s. Josh Dawson was 4-5 with two RBI’s. Ty Jacobs homered. Logan Hall (6-2) pitched seven and two thirds innings for the win. Michael Alger pitched an inning and one third scoreless with two strikeouts. Colby is 27-25 overall and 16-16 in the Jayhawk West. Seward is 28-28 overall and finishes 24-8 in the Jayhawk West, an improvement of six games from last year.

Seward, Butler, Johnson, and Cowley host four team double elimination tournaments Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Seward plays Labette Saturday at noon. Colby plays either Neosho or Allen Saturday at 3 p.m. Neosho will come to Liberal unless Allen wins both games today against Johnson County. The losers of the games play Saturday night at 6 p.m. with the winners meeting Sunday at 1 p.m. The championship will be Monday. Seward’s games will all air on Talkradio 1270 and kscbnews.net.