Cougars defeat Chargers to start 26-5A baseball

Champion opened district play in 26-5A baseball Tuesday night in Boerne and the results weren’t what the Chargers were hoping for.

New Braunfels Canyon was in town and handed the Chargers an 11-0 loss in five innings. It’s Champion’s first loss this year and drops them to 2-1 overall and starts them at 0-1 in district.

The Chargers will take a break from district action for a bit and will play non-district games between now and March 15 when they visit Dripping Springs.

The Chargers are entered in the Comal ISD Tournament this weekend that started Thursday and they’ll also play non-district games against Smithson Valley and Clark next week.

In Tuesday’s game, Canyon held an early 1-0 lead in the first inning but they took control in the third with 6 runs.

The Cougars put its first two batters on with a single and walk, but the Chargers were able to retire the next two batters with a ground out and a strikeout and were one out away from getting out of the inning.

However, a hit batter and a balk pushed in another run to make it 2-0. A walk, followed by a triple cleared the bases and brought in three more runs and pushed the lead to 5-0.

An error and another single helped the Cougars score two more runs and it was 7-0 as they sent 10 batters to the plate in the frame.

Canyon added 2 more runs in the fourth and fifth to end it after the Chargers couldn’t scratch for a run in five at bats.

Champion finished with 4 hits, singles from Jordan Ballin, Josh Bowman, Ryan Brandon and Aiden Pickett.

Robbie Vela started on the bump and went 2.2 innings. Karson Kaiser tossed 1.2 innings and Cooper Marshall threw part of an inning.

Vela fanned 5, while Kaiser and Marshal both struck out 1 batter each.