The Pratt Community College (PCC) baseball team entered the final series of the season on May 6-7 against Seward County with three option. The first, they sweep the Saints and secure a spot in the playoffs. The next best option was to split with the Saints and hope other teams around them lose to secure a spot in the playoffs. The final option was to lose the series against the Saints and call it a season.
The Beavers took option one and sweep the Saints three games to one. After day one, the series was split 1-1 leaving either team a chance to sweep the series the following day. On Saturday, May 7, the Beavers went out and took care of business winning both games by a score of 9-6 and 23-8.
"A lot of good baseball from our guys," said Head Coach Todd Reller. "We talked about what we needed to do to control our own destiny."
Pratt will open up the first round of playoffs traveling to Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC) for a best of three series starting on Wednesday, May 11. The series will run through Friday, May 13 if needed and will consist of one nine inning game per day. Game time is set at 1:00 pm each day. Fans can watch the action live by visiting https://www.kjccc.org/sports-network.
The Blue Dragons finished second in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference (KJCCC) East and has the third overall seed in the tournament. They finished their season 45-10 overall and 26-6 in conference play. Kansas City finished their season with a split against the top seeded Cowley Tigers.
Kansas City is hitting .325 as a team with over 500 hits and 57 homeruns. Freshman Lee Allen Jr. leads the Blue Dragons with a .478 average. The pitching unit has a combined 4.62 ERA and is averaging 8.63 strikeouts per nine innings.
"They are a very talented and they do a lot of things right, said Coach Reller. "We need to handle everything they throw at us, handle the talented players, and give us every chance to go get a first round series and move on to Manhattan."