Fernley baseball, softball teams hit stretch drive needing to stack wins

Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter

With three weeks left in the regular season, the Fernley High School baseball and softball teams find themselves needing to pile up the wins to guarantee their place in the 3A North Region playoffs.

Both Vaquero teams start the stretch run in Dayton this weekend, with a single game Friday and doubleheader Saturday.

The baseball team stands third in the East League of the 3A North, but are tied for sixth in the playoff standings with Truckee, but with a loss earlier this season to Truckee, the Vaqueros need to finish with more points in the standings than the Wolverines to get into the postseason.

The Vaqueros won two of three games last week against Lowry, sweeping a doubleheader Saturday 7-6 and 6-2, after losing the first game of the series Friday, 10-6. But the Vaqueros missed a chance to add two points to the ledger Tuesday, when South Tahoe rallied from a 4-0 deficit to edge them 5-4.

Teams earn one point for each league win, and two for each crossover win over a team in the other league. The Vaqueros are 3-3 in league play, and 3-3 in crossovers.

The softball team finds itself in unfamiliar territory at the bottom of the Northern 3A East with an 0-6 record, having been swept by both Fallon and Lowry, currently the top two teams in the East. But the Vaqueros currently hold the sixth playoff seed, thanks to a 5-1 record in crossover games. The Vaqueros are two points ahead of Dayton in the standings, but Dayton still has two crossover games to play.

The Vaqueros were swept in a three-game series last weekend by Lowry, 16-10, 11-3 and 10-0. But Fernley came back Tuesday to beat South Tahoe in their final crossover game, 26-3.