The Spirit Lake Indians outlasted the Sheldon Orabs 4-3 in an eight inning contest as both teams opened the baseball season at Orab Field Tuesday night.
Spirit Lake opened the scoring with a run in the first inning as Keaton Leach scored from third on a sac fly to center off the bat of Gavin Kramer.
Sheldon tied the score with a run in the bottom of the second as Ross Van Kley singled to right field and later scored from third on a wild pitch.
Spirit Lake plated a pair of runs in the top of the fifth inning to move in front 3-1. Tony Echert and Gavin Kramer had back to back singles to lead off the inning. Echert scored on a sac fly by Brock Tweet with Kramer crossing the plate on an error.
The Orabs tied the game in the bottom of the sixth. Cody Van Meeteren opening the inning with a walk followed by a Ross Van Kley single. Van Meeteren scored on a sac fly by Travis Sterler with Van Kley scoring later in the inning on a wild pitch.
The score remained tied until the top of the eight inning when Jeremiah Eldridge singled to left with two out, stole second and eventually scored on a single to left by Corey Meschede to make the final 4-3 in favor of Spirit Lake.
Gavin DeVos got the win in relief of Logan Backkhaus. De Vos went the final 3 innings striking out 5 and walking 2 on 44 pitches.
Matt Buenger took the loss going the final 3 innings in relief of Ross Van Kley. Van Kley gave up two earned runs with Buenger giving up just 1 earned run while striking out 2 and giving up 1 hit on 26 pitches.
Up next for Sheldon is a trip to LeMars Wednesday night. Spirit Lake travels to Sioux Central for a Wednesday evening contest.
