| Kyle Esquibil dives for second base during a recent game with Taylorsville, the team Helper faces next in the American Legion Touranment. |
Rain on Tuesday caused a temporary halt to the state American Legion baseball tournament in Kearns, but that didn’t keep the Helper entry into the contests to lose any enthusiasm after they had beaten Cedar City on Saturday 5-2 and then had taken out Murray 5-3 on Monday.
In the Cedar City game, home runs by Joe Via and Chris Hatch sent the team into the winners bracket from the first day.
On the mound, Kyle Edgehouse was the winning pitcher by hurling the ball into the seventh inning when Adam Martinez came in to finish out the game.
Helper scored in deuces, two runs in the second inning, two in the fourth and the final two came in the fifth frame.
Via also had a two base hit in the contest as well.
Altogether Helper collected nine hits in the game while the two eastern Utah pitchers held Cedar City to five.
Both teams committed one error.
In the Murray game Martinez came in to relieve Brett Johnson and the little left hander got the job done by nipping a Murray rally and getting the final out.
Murray had scored two runs in the final frame and had two more runners on base when Martinez took over as hurler for Helper.
Helper had done all their scoring in the first five innings with two in the first and one in the third, fourth and fifth innings. Murray didn’t score until the fourth inning with one run and then had the two in the seventh with those threatening runners on base.
Next up for the Helper team was powerful Taylorsville, which they played after press time on Wednesday night.