Legion playoffs on the line

The Pahrump American Legion season is coming to a close with four games left in the season.

The playoffs are just two weeks away in the last week of July and the team is close to being eliminated from the playoffs.

The team dropped two of the last three games.

American Legion Coach Brandon Bietar believes his team can still make the playoffs despite the loss on Monday to Coronado, 13-0 and a loss Wedneday to the first place team Liberty, 11-1.

“We ran into a couple of roadblocks and we just got back on track yesterday with a win over Rancho, 9-7,” he said on Wednesday afternoon before the Liberty game. “The nice thing about the win is their team is comprised of players from Desert Pines and some other teams in our division. Yesterday was a good win, but we really did not play well on Monday. We lost 13-0. Our defense and offense was horrible and our pitching was nothing exceptional either. Yesterday our offense and defense stepped up.”

Last night’s loss was too late to report. The Trojans fall to 15-7 and are now in fifth place. Centennial beat Desert Oasis and is now 19-7.

Bietar remains optimistic his team can still pull off the playoffs. In American Legion the top four go. He feels that his team can even come back from a loss to Liberty if the team was to win the last four games. It can be a tall order because they play the first place Liberty again on July 24.

Bietar picked Josh Mortensen, Anthony Lopez and Richard Greene as his players of the week. Mortensen and Lopez both pitched good games against Rancho and Green went 3-4 again.