Indians give new baseball coach his 500th win

The Comanche baseball team gifted their new head coach a couple of milestones within a few days.

Craig Coheley was hired last summer as the new baseball coach where he coached the team in summer ball, so he had to wait quite a while for his official head baseball coaching debut.

It was worth the wait as the Indians gifted him his 500th career win last Saturday with a 4-3 win at Petrolia, Texas.

“I’m glad I did that, it’s a personal accomplishment, but I was just as elated to see these guys win a game,” Coheley said. “They won 4-3, it was a great game and they were really happy. As a personal milestone, it’s nice, but as a first game as the Comanche coach it was nice too.”

On Monday, they gave him his first home win in their home opener with a 2-1 win over Apache in a five inning game.

“They agreed to a five inning game because after playing 14 innings on Saturday, we’re a little short on arms,” Coheley said. “I thought Cooper Dobbins pitched a really good game. It was his second outing and we’re going to have to work at using several people on the mound. He really came through for us. I thought Carson Vansickle and the guys at the top end of my lineup did a real good job of scoring runs when we had the opporutunities. We’re trying to piece this all together. I’m new this year and I’ve got a lot of young kids in the bottom half of my lineup, so it’s really important that the top end carries us right now so some of those other guys can grow.”

Vansickle scored both runs for Comanche. He scored from third in the bottom of the first on a dropped third strike. He scored again from third in the bottom of the third on a wild pitch. He had doubled earlier in the inning.

Dobbins got out of a jam in the top of the second when the Warriors had the bases loaded with no outs, but Dobbins struck out the next two batters and got the third to pop out to shortstop to end the threat.

The two strikeouts were part of a one hit, 10-strikeout performance for the sophomore hurler.

Comanche had only two hits in the game, but made them count with Vansickle and Payton Jones both getting doubles.

 Apache made it interesting in the top of the fifth when they pushed one run across the plate, but Dobbins struck out the final batter to end the game.

A big fifth inning by Nocona broke open a close game. The teams had swapped the lead in earlier innings, but Nocona took the lead for good with two runs in the top of the fourth that made the score 6-4 and then added four more runs in the top of the fifth.

Comanche had six hits in the game, led by Cooper Dobbins, who went 2-for-3 with two runs scored and Levi Slovak, who went 2-for-2 with two RBI. Payton Jones had a single and an RBI and Clayton Brantner had a hit and an RBI. Both Dobbins and Brantner had doubles.

Jones took the loss on the  mound as he tossed two innings, giving up three hits, one earned run and striking out two.

The Indians held off a late rally by the Pirates. They took a 2-0 lead in the first inning and then expanded it to 4-1 after four innings. Petrolia would come back to score one run in the fifth and one in the sixth and final inning to cut it to 4-3, but Carson Vansickle recorded the final out on a fly ball to center fielder Koble Lewis.

Comanche had three hits in the game with one each from Jones, Slovak and Kaison Votruba.  Vansickle walked three times and scored all three runs for Comanche. Slovak had two RBI and Jones had one.

Vansickle picked up a complete game, giving up five hits and three runs. He struck out 13.