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ALTON – The Alton High baseball team started the season off hot, jumping out to a 6-1 record. They then traveled down to Alabama to face some tough tournament competition and lost three straight.
The Redbirds got back into the winning column on Monday when they hosted and beat the Roxana Shells by a score of 2-0.
“Yeah, Alabama was not very good to us,” Alton head coach Scott Harper said. “It was a long drive, for some not very good baseball that we played. We had some moments, but this was a much cleaner game. Get back home, Roxana’s a really good team.”
The Shells are off to one of their better starts in quite some time. They also opened the season on a 6-1 run and currently sit 7-2-1.
“Really happy with our first 10 games,” Roxana head coach Jerry Wheaton said. “We’ve challenged ourselves with a couple of 4A schools. We beat Granite City 1-0, lost today 2-0. [Alton] got some breaks, and we didn’t make a few plays that we normally make.”
Monday’s player of the game was undoubtedly Alton’s starting pitcher, sophomore Donavon Ducey. He threw a complete game shutout, only allowing one hit while striking out six.
The Shells only had two base runners on the day. Trevor Gihring found himself at second base after getting on thanks to an error, and Max Autry broke up the no-hitter with a leadoff single in the top of the fourth. That was it for Roxana.
Ducey only had to face 23 batters to get the 21 outs needed to win the game.
“He was very efficient, fell behind a little bit, got into some three-ball counts, full counts, and threw strikes in there,” Harper said. “No walks today, which is awesome to do that. He hasn’t got too many chances yet. He’s been throwing his side sessions, keeping his work in, so it paid off today. We were hoping to get two or three [innings] out of him today, but he was just rolling, so we let him roll.”
It was Ducey’s first career start and first win.
The Redbirds tacked both their runs on the board in the bottom of the fourth. With senior pitcher Cooper Harris out on the mound for the Shells, Alton’s Reid Murray got things going with a leadoff single and then got to second on a wild throw to first.
Ayden Calvert laid down a perfect bunt to get on first and send Murray to third. Calvert then stole second. That brought up Anderson Kaufmann, whose sacrifice fly scored Murray from third to make it 1-0. Carsen Bristow then popped out, but Calvert still scored thanks to some nice baserunning to make it 2-0.
It was both a great outing for Ducey and also an off-day for Roxana’s bats.
“My assistant Robert [Rahn], he’s kind of our hitting guru, we kind of joked about it in the first few innings, you can tell we haven’t played in nine days,” Wheaton said. “We’ve had a lot of practice and some swings in the last nine days, but it’s still tough to go back to live pitching.”
Thanks to the tremendous amount of rainfall last week, cancelling all of Roxana’s games, they hadn’t played since March 28, an 8-3 home win against Piasa Southwestern.
It was the beginning of a five-game week for the Shells, who will play 13 games in 18 days from now until April 24. But they still enjoy their non-conference opponents, such as Alton.
“Oh yeah, [the kids] play together all summer. A lot of guys play Legion together, or with GBA, Extreme, whoever they play with,” Wheaton said.
“But it’s fun for Harper and me, because Harp means a lot to me as a mentor. I was his assistant coach for five years, and I wouldn’t be the head coach I am today without him. All the things he does for the kids, and the way he coaches and teaches the game, it’s really shaped me into the coach that I am. I give Scott a lot of credit over there.”
The Shells kick off conference play with a home-and-home series against East Alton-Wood River on Tuesday and Thursday, both games starting at 4:30 p.m.
It was a special day for Alton as it was just the second game on the brand-new turf infield.
“We love it, a great facility,” Harper said. “The play of the game, not worrying about bad hops, all the background stuff of maintenance, and things like that. Obviously, it’s turned out great.’
“We’re still feeling it out because we haven’t really gotten to practice up here much with the weather and stuff. But we’ll continue to work at it and make it home. We’re just blessed to have it, that the administration and the board were willing to take these steps to have it for us.”
Monday was the beginning of a three-game homestand for Alton. They host East St. Louis on Tuesday and Gillespie on Wednesday, all games starting at 4:30 p.m.
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