The Wilsonville baseball season has not gone according to plan over the first couple weeks. After losing their first two contests by one run each (West Albany 1-2 in 14 innings and 3-4 to Sprague) Wilsonville took a trip to Arizona to try to give their offense a spark to end the month of March. The offense seemed to find it in their first game defeating a bad Standley Lake team from Colorado by a score of 17-5, however after that the offense disappeared once again.

Wilsonville got shut out in it’s next couple games losing 0-5 then 0-10 against Arrowhead Christian and Desert Mountain respectively. It looked like Wilsonville finally found some footing in a 5-5 tie against a good Mountain Pointe team (12-4-1) in their last game of the Arizona tournament until they returned home for a game against Central Catholic.

The Rams were ranked a measly 39th out of 49 6A teams and had limped to a 1-7 start before playing Wilsonville. But that didn’t matter to CC the rams got out to a hot start against Wilsonville ace Justin Schramm scoring a pair of runs in the first inning off a couple Schramm walks and an RBI double from Spencer Marron.

The score stayed 2-0 with both Schramm and the CC starter Gavin Dunn both finding good rhythms early on. Schramm commented about his pitching performance, “I felt like I struggled to find the zone early, but as the game went on I found my groove and was able to get outs and help my team.”

In the 4th inning lightning struck, with a leadoff walk from Berkley Reents then a single from Wade Hagey, cleanup hitter. Justin Schramm came up to the plate with two on and nobody out. Schramm laid a bunt down the 3rd base side, and Dunn scampered off the mound and tried to make a play at first base that sailed over first baseman Wyatt Brown’s head and down the right field line.

Both Reents and Hagey scored while Schramm made it all the way to 3rd. With a runner on third and nobody out Wilsonville looked prime to take a lead in the 4th, but that’s when the offense shut down again. Mark Wiepert popped out, Owen Eggert struck out, and Jacob Ogden flew out to end the scoring threat.

With Justin Schramm starting to find his groove on the bump everyone at Wilsonville high school buckled up for what looked to be a pitchers duel down the stretch, the teams traded a couple scoreless frames before the Rams broke it open in the 6th.

As Schramm came out of the game after allowing the first two runners on base to start the 6th Kheller Larson came in and couldn’t keep the Central Catholic offense quiet. With a combination of a couple walks and some good hitting by Central Catholic the Rams put up a 5 spot in the 6th inning that would ultimately be the deciding factor for this matchup.

Wilsonville went scoreless in the bottom half of the inning before both teams scored a run in the 7th but Wilsonville couldn’t find enough offense in the end. As Central Catholic defeated Wilsonville 8-3 they improved their record to 2-7 while Wilsonville fell to 1-5-1.

Kheller Larson spoke on Wilsonville’s struggles at the plate after the game “We know what it takes to turn it around, we need to eliminate strikeouts, put the ball in play, focus on hitting line drives especially in a ball park as big as ours.”

CC will take on David Douglas next Monday, while Wilsonville has to travel to Bend on Thursday. Wilsonville will need to find some offense if they want to start turning their season around and quick, they will play their first league game on Tuesday against Hilsboro.