The baseball season is officially at the half way mark, and the Raiders are rolling through district. The Raiders are 21-3 on the year and 7-0 through the first round of district. District started on March 17 for the Raiders as they faced off against Dumas. Starting pitcher, senior Duncan Bowles threw a no hitter to shut out the Demons 12-0.

On the 18th the Raiders went over to West Plains to face off against the Wolves for the first time in school history. The stands were packed for the intense game that went into extra innings, and Carson Haffner did his job at the beginning of the game by holding off the Wolves and striking out 10 hitters. At the end of the first 7 innings, the score was tied and it was time for bonus baseball, but the Raiders didn’t take long adding a two run lead in the top of the eighth while Logan Tice closed out the game in the bottom of the inning. The next game against Canyon would prove to be even more suspenseful. Starting the game at home the Raiders took an early 3-0 lead in the second inning, but the Eagles fought back and scored three of their own and took a one run lead in the sixth. Not wanting to lose to their rivals, the Raiders scraped to score another run in the bottom of the sixth to tie the game. Once again the score was tied at the end of the seventh, so the two teams kept playing until they ran out of daylight, and with both teams wanting to continue the fight the coaches decided to finish the game at WT where they could play under the lights. It only took one inning for the Raiders to finish off Canyon courtesy of the walk off single by Logan Tice, scoring the winning run Hagen Shedd from third base.

The next four games would be a lot easier for the Raiders with Randall outscoring Hereford, Perryton, Borger and Pampa a combined 48-2. If I could give an award for the best hit of the first round of district, it would go to the senior Eli Williams, who recorded his first hit on a single against Borger and scored two RBIs.  At the end of the first round of district the top four in the ranking are: 1st Randall, 2nd Canyon, 3rd Hereford, 4th West Plains-Pampa. The top four teams in every district will go to playoffs.