DODGE CITY — Great Bend’s Mitch Kottas and Hayden Hutchinson of Hays were locked in a classic pitcher’s duel on Tuesday night during the Class AAA American Legion Zone 7 Tournament at Demon Field.
After the Chiefs beat Dodge City 13-6 in the opening game of the zone, Kottas and Hutchinson matched each other with strong inning after strong inning. Hays led 1-0 after two innings before Great Bend knotted the score in the third.
At that juncture, both pitchers clamped down as neither allowing another run until the eighth. But Hays finally broke through with a pair of runs in the eighth and held on for a 3-1 victory.
“Now it’s going to be tough for us to advance to the state tournament,” Great Bend head coach Michael Stettinger said. “To do that, we’re going to have to win two games (today) and one more on Thursday.
 “Mitch pitched a great game for us. It’s something he’s been doing all season for us. Nick Ney pitched well in the first game. We had complete games from both of our pitchers.”
The loss to Hays puts the Chiefs (17-16) in the elimination round against Dodge City in the three-team, double-elimination zone. The two teams will meet again today at 4, with the winning team advancing to play top-seeded Hays tonight at 7 and the losing team ending its season.
Providing the Chiefs can beat both Dodge City and Hays tonight, they will then have to come back to Dodge and beat Hays again on Thursday to advance to the state tournament in Leavenworth.
In the game against Hays, though, the difference was the Eagles’ Clayton Basgall, who had hits in his first four at-bats and finished 4-for-5. Basgall led off the eighth with a single and later scored the eventual winning run on Trevor Henningsen’s RBI single. Riley Kaus then followed with a run-scoring double for its 3-1 lead.

GAME 1
Great Bend 13,
Dodge City 6
The Chiefs advanced to the winners’ bracket after outlasting Dodge City in the opening game of the day.
Right-hander Ney withstood the sweltering 100-degree heat in throwing a complete game, and the Chiefs pulled away after scoring eight runs in the sixth, breaking a 3-3 tie for an 11-3 lead.
The first 10 Chiefs batters reached base in the sixth. Highlighting their flurry was Logan Buehler hitting an RBI single and Matt Marshall hitting a bases-clearing, three-run double.
Great Bend built a 3-0 lead in the first, including an RBI single by Landon Leuenberger, driving in Jace Bowman, who hit a one-out single. Ney had an RBI groundout later in the inning.
Dodge City knotted the score at 3-3 in the third, capped by Jared Helfrich’s two-run single.
But the Chiefs promptly took the momentum right back with their eight-run uprising.

Class AAA American Legion
Zone 7 Baseball Tournament
Tuesday
At Demon Field
GAME 1
Great Bend 13, Dodge City 6
                        123 456 789      R  H  E
Great Bend     300 008 200 —13 13  5
Dodge City     102 000 201 —  6   8  4
     Nick Ney & Landon Leuenberger; Jacob Gleason, Cody Chance (6), Ernie Fernandez (6), Damien Salem (7) & BJ Tieben. W — Ney. L — Gleason. 2B — Great Bend (Matt Marshall, Mitch Kottas).
GAME 2
Hays 3, Great Bend 1
                        123 456 789       R H  E
Hays                010 000 020 —  3 10 2
Great Bend     001 000 000 —  1 10 1
     Hayden Hutchinson & Chandler Rule; Mitch Kottas & Landon Leuenberger. W — Hutchinson. L — Kottas. 2B — Hays (Basgall).