By John RittenhouseThe Adrian baseball team began defense of its 2002 Red Rock Conference championship in Lamberton Tuesday.The Dragons took on Red Rock Central-Westbrook-Walnut Grove in a game that was moved from Adrian to Lamberton due to Monday’s snowstorm.Adrian opened league play in a positive way by upending the hosts 13-3 in a game that ended after six innings of play due to the 10-run rule.Led by a four-hit effort by senior Pete Hohn, Adrian racked up 13 hits at the plate against RRC-W-WG.With Tyler Wolf limiting the hosts to one earned run to set the pace defensively, all of the ingredients were in place for an AHS rout.Adrian never trailed in the game and put the contest away with an eight-run uprising in the top of the sixth inning. The Dragons sported a 5-2 cushion before settling the issue in the seventh.While Wolf, who yielded six hits and one walk in the game, blanked the hosts through three innings, the Dragons opened a 4-0 lead by scoring one run in the top of the first inning and adding three more in the second.Dusty Henning drew a walk before scoring Adrian’s first-inning run when Brandon Wolf singled.Wolf helped his own cause by tripling in the second frame. He scored when Brandon Schettler bounced into a fielder’s choice.Levi Bullerman and Hohn singled one run each to make it a 4-0 game before the second inning was complete.After RRC-W-WG made it a 3-1 game in the bottom of the third, Adrian regained a four-run cushion (5-1) when Joe Kruger tripled and scored on Dusty Spieker’s sacrifice fly to left-center field in the top of the fifth.The hosts added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings, but it wasn’t enough to contend with Adrian’s eight-run effort in the top of the sixth.Hohn singled before Wolf and Kruger drew walks to load the bases at the beginning of the rally. Spieker walked to force in the first run of the frame, and Nick Weidert added an RBI single before Schettler and Henning drew bases-loaded walks to make the difference 9-2.Bullerman, who had two hits along with Wolf in the game, singled home two runs as the inning progressed. Hohn and Wolf capped the rally with run-scoring singles.Wolf fanned a pair of batters during his six-inning stint on the hill. Two of the three runs he allowed were unearned.The 2-0 Dragons are scheduled to host Minneota for a doubleheader Friday before entertaining Edgerton for a conference game Tuesday.
