FARGO--Chase Gooding's performance on the mound, in the field, and at the plate helped lift the No. 1 seed West Fargo Packers over the No. 8 seed Wahpeton Huskies 5-0 in the first round of the North Dakota East Region baseball tournament Thursday at Jack Williams Stadium in Fargo.
Gooding pitched five innings before giving up a hit and knocked in two runs for the Packers.
West Fargo head coach Brett Peterson said Gooding's performance in all three areas of the game gave the team a good edge over the Huskies.
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"He was huge. First and foremost, he attacked the zone and mixed the speeds well. He's locating his fastball, locating his curveball toward the middle innings of the game," Peterson said.
Wahpeton managed to get two runners on in the third inning off of a walk and a hit by pitch, but Gooding saved himself with a stellar defensive play when he scooped up a grounder and made a difficult throw to third base to take away a potential baserunning threat.
"I think where he was even more important was fielding his position," Peterson said. "He makes an unbelievable play to throw the ball to third base and get that guy out. If he doesn't do that, it's a potential big inning.
"All the way around he just had a fantastic game."
Wahpeton held the Packers offense in check for the first three innings, but in the bottom of the fourth, West Fargo's Hunter Ulmer smacked a two-run home run off of Wahpeton's Nate Beyer to put West Fargo up 2-0.
Following West Fargo's productive fourth inning, Gooding took advantage of Wahpeton at the plate with a two-run triple to center field in the bottom of the fifth inning to put the game out of reach at 5-0.
Wahpeton head coach Wade Gilbertson said the strategy was to give West Fargo's best players a hard time.
"We knew what they were all about," Gilbertson said. "We just wanted to have a good gameplan, make them hit a lot of off speed pitches, make them hit a lot of pitches they don't want to hit, we wanted to make their best players not beat us."
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The Packers will take on Fargo North at 4 p.m. in the tournament semifinal at Jack Williams Stadium.
