March 14, 2017
W 9-1
By Kaivon Kealoha
Taft College hosted the Porterville Pirates for game one of a three game series and grabbed a dominant home victory by the score of 9-1. Cougar starter; Will Moore threw 5.1 innings, allowing 5 hits and punching out 3. Seth Sorensen threw 1.2 innings out of the bullpen and allowed no hits with 1 strikeout. Tait Ludwick closed out the game tossing the eighth and ninth innings.
Offensively, Taft hammered 11 hits, with 6 of them going for extra bases. Richard Ortiz clobbered a solo homerun in the fourth inning to put the first run on the board, and the other 8 runs poured in from there. Dominic Tating went 2-for-4 with a triple and single. Luke Lubiniecki collected 2 hits in 3 at-bats. Jayce Gardner, Brandon Stevens, Travis Turner and Nick Kawano all collected doubles.
The Cougars will travel to Porterville College on Thursday to play game 2 of the series; starting at 2:00 pm.