Dateline: Friday, April 16, 2021 — Bus driver Joan Henderson got up early to drive Pershing’s softball and baseball teams to Wolverine territory.
The baseball team went 0-2 against West Wendover, losing 16-5 and 16-2 in five innings.
Freshman softball player Taylor Garland described the weather. “It was back and forth; raining one minute, then there would be a little sunshine, then it was super windy, and it was like that all day pretty much,” she said.
Pershing County’s ball teams will each play 13 games this season, including six at the high school. Currently, only home crowds can attend most of Nevada’s high school sports matches– no visitors allowed.
However, the coaches and athletes hope locals show up on April 27 at 4 p.m. when Pershing County hosts Battle Mountain for a single game.
Likewise, they hope for support on Saturday, May 1, against Yerington. The Yerington games start at 10 a.m. and noon.
Pershing County drops season-opener on the road
Tim and Conner Fecht and Jordan Gentry pitched the first game of the doubleheader against Wendover. In the second game, the two Blakes — Blake Burrows and Blake Barter took over.
It was the last Wendover trip for Tim Fecht, Gentry, Barter, Raul Rincon, Logan Oberman, Jacob Thompson and Ethan Rhodes. They’ll graduate within weeks. According to MaxPreps, the rest of the team is split between freshmen and sophomores.
The sophomores are Wyatt Diaz (C), Christopher Drake, Burrows and Noel Zaldivar. The freshmen include Hunter Nolf, Aaron Kienbaum, Tommy Meyers and Conner Fecht.
West Wendover came out with 11 runs in the first inning of the day.
Pershing County’s bats came alive in the fourth and fifth, when they scored all five of their runs. Led by Diaz and Burrows, the Mustangs managed four runs in the fifth. But, sadly, it wasn’t enough, and they came up short.
The Mustangs got on the board in the second game when Barter singled on a 1-0 count, scoring one run.
But Wendover tied up the score at one in the bottom of the first inning. From there, Wendover dominated the rest of the contest, pulling away with eight runs in the second.
The Pershing County Mustangs are willing to put in the work.
The team is packed with football players and other athletes eager to turn things around with the help of their coaches, Will Barter, Jared Jensen, Jesse Canchola and Russell Fecht.
