Tigers' baseball season ends after district losses

The varsity baseball season ended for the Mountain Home Tigers last week as they bowed out of the District III 4A tournament with two straight losses.

Caldwell 14, Mountain Home 3

(Five innings)

Caldwell's Austin Van Horne threw a five-inning no-hitter against Mountain Home on May 4 as the Tigers opened the district tournament at Caldwell, losing to the Cougars, 14-3, in five innings.

The Cougars struck for five runs in both the second and third innings and added four more in the fourth to go up, 14-0.

The Tigers were unable to get a hit off Van Horne but scored three unearned runs in the fifth to make it a 14-3 final.

Teddy Reaume, Tyler McCall and Luke Lockard all drove in runs for the Tigers. Cody Blakemore, the first of three Tiger pitchers, suffered the loss.

"A tough game," said Tigers head baseball coach Matt Bundy. "Scoreless for a couple innings, then Caldwell scored some runs and jumped ahead."

Middleton 9, Mountain Home 1

The Caldwell loss put Mountain Home against Middleton, who lost to Kuna in the opening round. A six-run second inning for the Vikings put them ahead for good, as they won, 9-1.

Curran Price led the Tigers with two hits, including a double, and drove in Mountain Home's lone run in the sixth inning. Bailey Miller-Hodge, Hunter Ralphs and Jesse Cobos also had hits with Cobos suffering the loss.

With the loss, the Tigers end their season at 3-21, including a 14-game losing streak.

Bundy, who marked his first year as the team's head coach, saw some positives from the season.

"The season was a good experience," he said. "We would have liked to have won more games and done some damage at districts. We weathered some tough injuries to pitchers. We are graduating a good group of seniors, and they will be missed."