MARTIN - Bennett County held Hot Springs to one run through the first four innings and escaped with a 12-7 victory to capture the Region 4B West division championship in high school baseball action Friday night.
With John Slattery on the mound, the Warrior's got off to an early 4-1 lead after the first inning and added eight more runs through the next three innings to stretch their lead to 12-1 at the end of four.
"The wind caused both teams some problems defensively," said Bennett County head coach Bert Ready. "Anytime the ball was in the air, it was a tough situation. Their (Hot Springs) errors gave us too many opportunities, and we were able to take advantage of some of them."
Hot Springs scored six more runs in the fifth and sixth innings off of hits by Chris Housely, Andrew Tarrett and Austin Tomlinson, but that's as close as the Bison would get and finished the season with a record of 9-5.
The Warriors finished with eight hits and five errors while the Bison had seven hits and seven errors.
With the win, Bennett County
(10-4) advances to the Region 4B Championship game and will play the winner of Sunday's contest between Platte-Geddes and Winner-Colome.
"Both teams are quality teams and have quality athletes, so we have to play our best ball regardless of who we play," said Ready.
