'Hounds had to take long way to Wichita

It's about 750 miles to Colby. It's around 160 miles to Wichita.

The Fort Scott Community College baseball team had to go to Colby and get past the Trojans -- which it did by winning the last two games of a three-game series last weekend -- in order to get to Friday's Re-gion VI quarterfinals for the first time since the current post-season format was adopted three years ago.

In the old format discontinued after the 2003 season, Fort Scott made the finals of a Sub-Regional it hosted in 1996 but lost the final two games and were unable to advance to the then best-of-three Region VI Championship Series.

The different formats make it hard to compare the accomplishments of the 1996 and 2007 teams although both teams were two steps from the Junior College World Series when the post-season began.

But one thing is for certain: Back in the Sub-Regional days, the Greyhounds would never had been told to go to Colby first.

"I don't think any of us were worried about it," Greyhound sophomore shortstop Tom Fitzgerald said of the long trip. "If anything, I felt better this year going all the way out there than last year when we hosted it."

After losing the first game 19-9 Saturday, the Greyhounds had to turn right around and play the second game about 20 minutes after the first one ended. Fort Scott responded, winning 5-4 in 11 innings.

"I told J.P. (Verhulst) on the bench, 'If they win, we're done,'" sophomore catcher Tyler Cox said. "'But if we win, we're probably going to win (Sunday), too, because that momentum shift will go over to our side.' And we felt like we had a better game three (starting pitcher) than they did and if we could get a good start out of him, we'd be sitting pretty good."

Sunday, the Greyhounds won a wild 21-13 affair to win the series two games to one.

"We just happened to be hitting the ball really well that day," Cox said. "Unfortunately, they were too. But, luckily for us, we just out-scored them. Nobody was getting any stops on either side. I think we had maybe two innings where we didn't score offensively. If you're going to score seven out of nine innings, your chances are pretty good that you're going to win."

Post-season games are all nine innings, even when they're played as a doubleheader, which was the case on Saturday. But there wasn't much adjustment made to the longer game.

"You go out and play the same game," Fitzgerald says. "But those other two innings change the game completely as far as pitching goes. We didn't change much. We worked the pitch counts a little better but that's about it."

Now the Greyhounds travel to Wichita, playing the 3 p.m. game Friday afternoon -- the third of four games that day -- against either Dodge City or Kansas City Kansas, who are going to try to resume the third game of their suspended series tonight at 5 in KCK.

"We were told that before we went (to Colby) that there hadn't been a team to make it that far yet," sophomore catcher/designated hitter Lawson Hipps said. "That was kind of in the back of my mind, anyway, as we were playing that we could have a good memory, I guess."

Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, which has hosted professional baseball as well the National Baseball Congress World Series since its inception in the 1930s, will be the venue for the remainder of the Region VI Tournament, which will be double-elimination. This is the fourth consecutive year the tournament will be held there.

Playing in a professional ballpark won't be a new experience for the Greyhounds, who have played against KCK in the Kansas City T-Bones' park the last two years.

"If anything, it will be more fun having more people out there to see us play," Cox said. "We can get Fort Scott's name out there and have it recognized as a good baseball school. It will be nice to play on the nice field and have a big crowd there, hopefully."

Since they were a sixth seed going into the tournament, the Greyhounds said they aren't feeling any pressure to win. They feel now that if they go out and have fun, good things will happen.

"We're taking it one game at a time and we're going to out there and have fun," Hipps says. "Of course, we want to win the whole thing. But we're going to play loose and have a good time this weekend and let winning take care of itself."

Cox agreed: "It's all fun from here. There's no pressure on us. We're just going to play and have a good time and we'll let winning take care of itself. We're one of the top eight teams in our conference now, so let's have a good time with it."

Region VI Tournament

FIRST ROUND

(best-of-three series)

(W1) Butler def. (E8) Coffeyville, 2-0

Saturday, May 6: Butler 14-19, Coffeyville 4-12

(E4) Neosho County def.

(W5) Hutchinson, 2-1

Saturday, May 6: ppd., wet grounds

Sunday, May 7: Neosho County 5-5, Hutchinson 1-11.

Monday May 8: at Neosho County, ppd., wet grounds

Tuesday, May 9: Neosho County, 4-3

(W7) Dodge City and

(E2) Kansas City, tied 1-1

Saturday, May 6: Kansas City 13-5, Dodge City 11-9

Sunday, May 7: Dodge City 6, Kansas City 2 (5, susp., rain)

Monday, May 8: at Kansas City, ppd., wet grounds.

Wednesday, May 10: Dodge City (20-34) at Kansas City (37-19), resumption of susp. game, 5

(E6) Fort Scott def. (W3) Colby, 2-1

Saturday, May 6: Colby 19-4, Fort Scott 9-5 (second game, 11)

Sunday, May 7: Fort Scott, 21-13

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(E1) Cowley def.

(W8) Cloud County, 2-0

Saturday, May 6: Cowley 8-15, Cloud County 1-4

(W4) Garden City def.

(E5) Allen County, 2-1

Saturday, May 6: Allen County 16-9, Garden City 5-10

Sunday, May 7: Garden City, 13-3

(E7) Independence def.

(W2) Seward County, 2-0

Saturday, May 6: Independence 12-20, Seward County 7-14.

(E3) Johnson County def.

(W6) Pratt, 2-0

Saturday, May 6: Johnson County 12-14, Pratt 6-4.

Bracket play at Wichita

Friday, May 11

Game 1: Independence (E7: 31-25) vs. Johnson County (E3: 31-18), 9 a.m.

Game 2: Garden City (W4: 34-25) vs. Cowley (2: 41-15), noon

Game 3: Dodge City-Kansas City winner vs. Fort Scott (E6: 33-23), 3

Game 4: Neosho County (E4: 32-20) vs. Butler (W1: 37-13), 6

Saturday, May 12

Game 5: Loser Game 1 vs. Loser Game 2, 10 a.m. (Loser eliminated)

Game 6: Loser Game 3 vs. Loser Game 4, 1 (Loser eliminated)

Game 7: Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2, 4

Game 8: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4, 7

Sunday, May 12

Game 9: Winner Game 6 vs. Loser Game 7, 10 a.m. (Loser eliminated)

Game 10: Winner Game 5 vs. Loser Game 8, 1 (Loser eliminated)

Game 11: Winner Game 7 vs. Winner Game 8, 4 (Winner's bracket final)

Game 12: Winner Game 9 vs. Winner Game 10, 7 (Loser fourth)

Monday, May 13

Game 13: Winner Game 12 vs. Loser Game 11, 4 (Loser third)

Game 14: Winner Game 11 vs. Winner Game 13, 7 (First championship game)

Tuesday, May 14

Game 15: Necessary only if Winner Game 11 loses Game 14, 7 (Second championship game)