High school baseball: Skyline's quartet leads 4A South to All Star victory

OGDEN — A week after claiming the first baseball state championship in Skyline High School history, Luke Myers said the excitement still hasn't worn off.

"It definitely took about 10 years off my life winning that (championship) game. I really can't believe we did it, we've been talking about it since we were 8 years old," said Myers.

For Skyline's four all stars, the celebration continued Saturday at Lindquist Field. Myers and Skyline teammates Lars Lofgren, Bridger Berrett and Josh Stephens were instrumental in leading in the 4A South All-Stars to a 7-4 victory over the 4A North All-Stars.

Lofgren, Berrett and Myers combined to pitch four of the nine innings, while Stephens caught half the game behind the plate.

"It's great playing in this game, especially with a lot of my teammates," said Myers, who went 0-1 with a walk, a hit by pitch and two runs scored. "I've played with a lot of these kids before, and everyone is a great player, so it's nice to just come play, a fun pickup game."

South first baseman Jake Hasler of Orem was named the game's MVP after an impressive 3-for-3 performance with three singles an RBI and a run scored.

The South hitters got off to a bit of a slow start, but with the game level at 3-3 heading into the fifth inning they finally started manufacturing runs.

Westlake's Colton Willey doubled in the go-ahead run in the fifth. The South tacked on another run in the sixth and then two more in the seventh after Willey and Olympus' Chris Tatton opened the inning with a pair of singles. Tatton drove in Willey after he stole second, and then scored himself on an error.

"We started getting hits with runners in scoring position, that was the difference. You're not going to put up big numbers against good pitching and good defense, but you can kind of scratch a few here and a few there, and that's kind of what they did," said Skyline coach Eric Hansen.

The North lacked the same timely hitting. It tagged the South pitching staff for 11 hits and put the lead-off runner on base in seven of nine innings, but rarely strung hits together off the strong 4A South pitching staff.

"When I was making my lineup, I was like man 'we have a really good lineup and we have really good pitchers on this team,'" said Hansen.

Clearfield's Connor Parry and Sky View's Jason Oliverson were the only 4A North players with multi-hit games as each went 2 for 3. Mountain Crest's Zach Johnson and Logan's Spencer Parkinson drove in the North's squads other two runs, but they were both on ground outs.