HAYS – Tanner Rice and Palmer Hutchison homered and Hunter Parker struck out a career-high nine as the Hays Larks held off the Denver Cougars 6-5 Sunday at Larks Park.
The Larks (32-8, 22-4 RMBL) got on the board first when Palmer Hutchison singled to left scoring Ben Fierenzi who had walked to lead off the first inning.
The Larks big inning came in the second when Tanner Rice hit his first homerun of the season, a three-run homer over the right field wall giving Hays a 4-0 lead.
The Cougars tied the game with a grand slam in the top of the third inning.
With the game tied at four, Hutchison connected on a two-run homerun to left putting Hays up 6-4.
Denver scored a run on an error in the top of the sixth to close the gap to one run at 6-5.
Hunter Parker earned the win with six innings of relief. The only run he allowed was the unearned run following an error in the sixth inning.
He struck out a career-high nine as he moved to 5-2 on the season.
Tanner Rice and Palmer Hutchison both were two-for-three with three RBI’s in the win.
The Larks close out the regular season with games against the Gameday Angels on Tuesday and Wednesday.