The Western Nebraska Community College baseball team will be vying to repeat as Region IX champions as they get set to open the first-round of the Region IX tournament Friday and Saturday in Trinidad, Colorado.

                The Cougars will open the best of three series with a doubleheader on Friday against Trinidad State College with an if-necessary game slated for Saturday. The four first-round winners will advance to the double-elimination tournament in Colorado Springs, Colorado, next weekend.

                Other first round games will pit McCook Community College traveling to Lamar Community College, Luna Community College heading to Southeast Community College, and Northeastern Junior College hosting Otero College.

                Eli Hernandez, a freshman utility player that plays outfield, infield and pitches, said the key is just playing together as a unit.

                "We will have to show up and have everyone on point like pitchers, hitters, and defensive players," Hernandez said. "We will have to come out with a lot of energy and be ready to play."

                WNCC enters the weekend series with a 21-31 record and are 12-10 in April, including winning three straight against NJC as well three straight against McCook and Colby.

                "The team is doing good right now," Hernandez said. "Our hitters have been figuring it out and our starters have been doing really well the last couple of weeks. If we can just get our pitching and hitting to come together at the same time, we will have a good shot."

                Trinidad enters with a 40-15 record and have 12 of their last 15. The last time WNCC and the Trojans played, it was March 26 and 27 and Trinidad won four times, but the were close contests. Trinidad won 2-0 and 6-5 in pitcher duals and then also won 11-6 and 10-4.
                Hernandez said they have been working hard in practice to capitalize on what Trinidad does well.

                "When we played them last time, they like to throw the ball low so we got into a lot of ground balls," he said. "We have been practicing on hitting a low pitch this week so we can capitalize off that."

                The 2-0 game was a tight contest between the two pitchers. WNCC's Dawson Hurford allowed 11 hits and gave up just two, fourth-inning runs. Trinidad's Isaac Gallegos allowed just three hits in the shutout.

                Hernandez said the key is keeping the energy up.

                "We will have to hit that low pitch and keep the energy in the dugout the entire game," he said. "We have to not try to fall flat at anytime in the game because there will always be a chance to come back of what the score deficit is."

                WNCC has showed that they can come back and win games in the final innings and Saturday's regular season against McCook was one of those where the score was tied at 9-9 in the ninth and Jack Jones got a single to score Quinn McCafferty with the winning run.

                All the games in the Region IX tournament are 9-inning contests.

                Last year, WNCC defeated Trinidad State in the first-round at Trinidad 17-14 and 11-10. At the regional tournament, WNCC topped Southeast 6-4 before defeating Lamar 12-10. In the Region IX championship game, the Cougars beat Southeast 4-3 as Harold Baez got the 4-inning save in striking out six.