Dayton splits first day of Huffman Tournament; Wallace has big game

It’s not often a high school starting pitcher reaches the eighth inning of a game in such great shape on the pitch count.

That was junior right-hander Hunter Wallace Thursday afternoon for Dayton.

As the Huffman Tournament opener against Angleton went extra innings, Wallace was sitting at the 80-pitch mark.

He’d never pitched 8 innings. Broncos coach Matthew Moore had never left a pitcher in that long. But it resulted in a win.

As Wallace went the distance on the mound against another purple-clad team in the Wildcats, he also provided the winning hit for a 3-2 victory.

The Broncos came up short in the second game of the day, 5-1, to Class 4A power Needville.

Sebastian Avila singled with one out in the top of the eighth. Manny Castillo, who provided the big punch earlier to tie the game, was hit by a pitch. Two batters later and with two outs, Peyton Trahan walked to load the bases.

“We just needed just one more,” Wallace said. “I knew I could get the rest of them.”

The junior singled up the middle to score Avila and take the lead.

“I was just trying to put it in play,” Wallace explained. “Hit a single so we could score. I knew the bases were loaded and it was important. Two outs and we needed that run. It worked out for us.”

Wallace went back to the bump for the eighth time and struck out one Wildcat and induced two groundouts to close out the win.

“That was the longest I’ve ever pitched before,” Wallace said. “Body hurts.”

Despite the extra inning of work, Wallace finished with 93 pitches, 62 for strikes.

“I’ve never left a pitcher in for eight innings before,” Moore said. “But when you’re as efficient as he was, we were in a spot where if that was seventh inning, it would have been a no-brainer. What’s the difference in the seventh and the eighth? Give me three more outs and he did it.”

Wallace struck out four, walked two and allowed two earned runs on five hits.

“It was phenomenal,” Moore said. “Anytime you can have a kid go out there and execute pitches like he did, you just put yourself in a great spot to win. He gave up a few early, but he kept battling. He just kept keeping us in it.”

Dayton (3-5) trailed Angleton (2-3) by a run after the first inning and 2-0 after four innings.

Castillo provided a two-run single that scored Anthony Zuniga and Andrew Soliz in the top of the sixth.

“Manny had the clutch hit in the sixth to tie it up and Hunter himself had the clutch hit in the eighth to set himself up with the lead,” Moore said. “It was awesome.”

As baseball goes sometimes, Dayton struggled in the second game.

Needville (3-1), a regional semifinalist last year at 24-8 overall, pushed across three runs in the bottom of the first as Angelo Aprea produced the big two-run double and Landon House drove in a run on a single. The Blue Jays added a run on an error in the third and Aiden Armstrong produced an RBI single.

Dayton didn’t land its first hit until the top of the fifth as Avila doubled to right. Later in the inning, Castillo scored the lone Broncos run on an error.

Avila was 2-for-3 with a single added in the seventh.

In relief of starter Zuniga, Braden Gutierrez was effective for the Broncos with three hitless and scoreless innings. He struck one and walked one.

“He did a great job coming in from the bullpen and keeping us in it the best he could,” Moore said. “I hate that we couldn’t scratch out some runs across for him to really highlight that performance. You can’t ask for anything better out of the bullpen.”

Dayton has been working on its defense and Thursday presented some wind gusts. A couple mistakes were made, but overall Moore was pleased.

“We had a clean performance in terms of our infield play, which we really needed,” Moore said. “We have to trust what we can do and build on the positives from it. It’s baseball. You’re gonna have some that are really good and you’re gonna have some where you come up short.”

Dayton came into the tournament off a 2-3 stint at the Humble ISD Tournament in the freezing cold last week.

The weather looks great as Dayton will close out the Huffman Tournament with a 5:30 p.m. game against the host Falcons on Friday and an 11 a.m. game with New Waverly on Saturday.