Blue Jays bounced at West Region tournament

Just two outs from a spot in the semifinals on Thursday night, instead the Jamestown High School baseball team was on the way home Friday after a disappointing end to the season at the West Region tournament in Williston.

After a crushing, eight-inning loss to Minot in the quarterfinals, Mandan jumped out to a big early lead in a punch to the gut the Blue Jays could not bounce back from as the top-seeded Braves rolled 8-1. The Blue Jays lost to No. 5 seed Minot 14-6 in eight innings on Thursday. They led 4-2 going into the top of the seventh inning in that game.

Seeded fourth and with a region-leading 20 wins heading into the tournament, going 0-2 and having the season end abruptly was a tough pill to swallow for coach Cory Anderson’s team.

“I feel bad for those kids because they worked to get to that point, then all of the sudden it kind of unravels and it’s over pretty quickly,” Anderson said. “You have to bring a different mindset to postseason play and you have to create your own fortune. We just did not take care of business. It’s nobody else’s fault, we just didn’t get it done.”

The Blue Jays finished the season at 20-14, avoiding the West Region play-in game for the first time in four years.

West Region Tournament

At Williston

Loser-out game

Mandan 8, Jamestown 1

Blue Jays 000 100 0 — 1 3 1

Braves 501 101 x — 8 11 3

Tyler Krenz, Riley Schafer (2) and Joey Gebhardt. Parker Harm and Brady Zittleman. W—Harm. L—Krenz. 2B—Mandan, Tyler Johns, Logan McDowall. HR—Mandan, Harm.

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