EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's summer baseball team has had a successful tournament weekend at home thus far.
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The Tigers bounced back from 4-3 down and then tied 6-6 to take a 9-6 win from Ozark, Mo., located between Springfield and Branson, Mo., in their final group-play game of the Super 16 at Saint Louis University Tournament at the Edwardsville High junior varsity field Saturday afternoon; EHS, playing as the Tiger Baseball Club, split two group games at home Friday, defeating the St. Louis Sting Under-17 team 4-3 before dropping a 4-1 decision to Mac-n-Seitz Elite.
The Tigers will enter bracket play Sunday, with times and sites yet to be determined as of the moment; for further information, visit www.midamericantournaments.com
“This is a really good tournament,” said Tiger coach Tim Funkhouser. “We really played sound baseball yesterday; I was really pleased with the way our guys competed. I thought our guys gained some confidence yesterday, digging in there and competing.
“Today, I thought our guys handled it well; Ozark's got a nice club and they have some mature guys, some big guys and guys who play the game well. We were able to bounce back (after Ozark had tied the game), we were able to bounce back and push some more runs across.”
Edwardsville's summer team gives the younger players the opportunity to gain some game experience and gives them an idea of what the competition is like at the varsity level of baseball. “I just told the guys that every day is an opportunity to see where you're at,” Funkhouser said, “to gain confidence and to compete, so look at it with a positive attitude, and I thought our guys did a great job of competing.”
Both teams traded single runs in the first before the Tigers took a 3-1 lead in the third thanks to a two-run double off Andrew Yancik's bat, Tyler Lewis and Blake Burris both coming in. Things stayed that way until the fifth, when Ozark scored three times, highlighted by a RBI single from Zach Ford; a double play kept Ozark at a 4-3 lead.
RBI singles from Yancik and Will Messer and two Ozark errors helped the Tigers regain the lead at 6-4 through five innings, but Ozark scored twice more in the top of the sixth to draw level with Edwardsville, but a Chase Goeckel RBI double and a two-RBI single from Josh Volkmar scored three more runs to give the Tigers the win.
Burris, Yancik and Lewis each had two runs scored for Edwardsville on the day.
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