Curry County falls in LL first-round

Gerald Fritz had a single and scored Curry County’s only run as they fell to Albuquerque Altamont 12-1 on Sunday at Rams Field in the first-round of game in the state junior Little League (ages 13-14) baseball tournament.

Both teams got off to a slow start, but Altamont got on the board first with a couple of singles and stolen bases.

Curry County Couch Eric Sena said he the team had a few errors and Altamont took advantage them.

“It’s all about strategy,” Pena said about Altamont base runners who were able to steal numerous bases at times. “Baseball is all about that. We do a lot of call signs and not having our third coach on the field kind of hurt us a little bit. Our kids worked to change up the signs, we just got beat.”

Altamont had runners on second and third in the top of the fourth with one out. Colter Lutz singled to drive in Andrew Pratt to pull ahead 2-1. They added another run after Jared Lujan scored on a squeeze play when Joaquin Maese bunted to the pitcher to go up 5-1.

Altamont Coach Jerry Lujan said Curry County is a good scrappy little team.

“We started out a little slow, but the boys started to play better,” Lujan said. “We don’t have a lot of power so we have got to run and do a lot of different things to score runs. So every kid on the team has to be able to run when there on base.”

Altamont tacked on more runs over the next three innings to finish the game 12-1.

Altamont’s Austin Bell worked seven innings and struck out nine. Dakotah Yandell of Curry County went 5 2/3 innings and struck out on batter.

Curry County plays Taos at 7 p.m. at Bell Park unless field conditions improve over at Harris Field tonight.

Albuquerque Altamont 12, Curry County 1

Altamont0 1 0 4 3 2 2 - 12

Curry Co.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 - 1

WP — Austin Bell. LP — Dakotah Yandell. Top hitters — Altamont: Colter Lutz 4-5, 3RBIs, Sean Allin 3-3, 2RBIs, Joaquin 2-4, 3RBIs. Curry County: Victor Velaquez 2-3, 2 1Bs, Gerald Fritz 1-3, RBI.