Community R-6 showed signs of improvement since it played Clopton six months ago.

Community R-6 vs Clopton Photo Gallery

However, there were still plenty of mistakes for Trojans as they lost 13-7 on Tuesday at home to Clopton, allowing nine unearned runs via eight errors. Community led 3-2 after two innings but eventually fell behind 10-4. 

Head coach Joel Krato said Community (1-2) faced Clopton (1-0) twice during its fall season and lost 10-0 and 16-8. Krato said the Trojans “did more things right but also did the same amount of things wrong.” The little things that need to be done correctly added up to put Community into too big of a hole.

“We keep making mistakes, and it’s things we work on regularly,” Krato said. “It’s about time we outgrow making the same mistakes like throwing the ball, hitting the cutoff man, catching the ball, being in the right spot when we catch the ball and knowing what to do with the ball.”

Krato said Community is young and inexperienced this season that it just needs to play more baseball to decrease these mistakes. When Clopton on the other side is “athletic and well-coached” under Dean Streed, he said the Trojans can’t afford to have mistakes add up.

Community’s inexperience impacted the team in negative ways but also gave the team a big boost. The bottom of the lineup with three new spring varsity starters this season set up the Trojans to where they had runners in scoring position in just about every inning. Houston Hogan, Matthew Utterback and Ean Johnson combined to go 3-for-7 with five walks and five runs scored.

“It’s very encouraging,” Krato said. “Houston’s improved so much since the fall after struggling a lot with confidence and not being ready for that speed of the game. Ean and Matthew did exactly what they were supposed to do — get bunts down and run fast.”

Lane Carter and Cooper Rohan put balls in play to score runs and give Community its 3-2 lead in the second inning after the bottom of the order set the table. Then, Kyler Swaim and Nik Crider each came through in the sixth inning to cut the deficit to 10-7. Crider was 2-for-3 with two RBI, and Swaim had two RBI.

Krato said Community, at times, swung the bat well, made some defensive plays and executed on the mound. However, the Trojans didn’t execute enough at the plate to cancel out the mistakes.

“We expect the top of the order to be productive,” Krato said. “A lot of it had to do with sometimes trying to do too much and just not swinging at the right pitches.”

Kaiden Erdel had a RBI double, and Drake Welch went 1-for-2 with two walks and two runs scored. Welch had six strikeouts, four earned runs and four walks in 4 2/3 innings pitched, and Crider had three walks, two hits and no earned runs in 2 1/3 innings pitched in relief.

Community plays at Marion County (2-0) at 5 p.m. Thursday, and Krato doesn’t want to see the Trojans hurt themselves as much they did on Tuesday.

“The expectations are higher than I thought they would be at this point in the season,” Krato said. “We played so much better than six months ago in the fall. It’s things we’ve got to get better at, and we’re going to get better at.”